Police are still trying to find out why four siblings ran away from their mother’s home Saturday evening.  The siblings ranged in age between nine and sixteen years old.  Police said there were a couple of clues that led them to believe that this was no abduction.

Winder Police Public Information Officer Chris Cooper said, “If you’re gonna pack up your clothes in a duffle bag and take your X-box with you… It seemed as though they were just leaving, and who knows what their plan was.”

A simple missing X-box gave Winder Police the idea that this runaway was planned. The mother told them that when she came back home from work on Saturday and found them missing– she had an idea of where there were heading.

Cooper said, “We believe that they’re just trying to get to their father.”

Their father lives in Florida. Cooper said the daughter’s eighteen-year-old Hispanic boyfriend drove the kids away from home.  And now he’s facing possible charges.

”We might possibly look at the Hispanic male for interference with custody charges probably one for each child, but we have to take in acount the willful the children are,” Cooper explained.

Around one o’clock this afternoon, a Winder investigator got in touch with one of the kid’s friends. That friend convinced the kids to turn themselves in. 

Cooper said, “They were here in town still.  They had not left yet, they had not gone to Florida. They agreed, I’m assuming, given the understanding that they could be getting their eighteen-year-old friend in trouble, they agreed to meet with the investiagtor here in town somewhere and he’s in the process of getting them turned back into their mother.”

There’s an interesting twist to this story regarding the government shutdown.  Cooper told me that the investigator considered issuing a possible Amber Alert, but due to the shutdown, he said that organization is currently furloughed.

 

Reported by: Catherine Patterson