Imagine a woman’s surprise when four young grandchildren she had never met before – allegedly kidnapped by their father from their Forest Park home -- showed up on her doorstep in Mexico.
Now, a month after they disappeared, the children are home after a harrowing, cross-country journey from Georgia to Mexico in the company of Francisco Madrigal, wanted on a warrant for kidnapping out of Clayton County.
“We’re very relieved that the children of course were returned safely and reunited with their mother,” Forest Park police Lt. James Delk said in a phone interview Wednesday evening with the AJC.
Their father, Delk said, “had made threats that he would harm the children, but luckily he did not follow through with him.”
Madrigal, 36, was identified in a Levi’s call issued Sept. 13 as having taken his four children from his ex-girlfriend Miriam Rivera. They are the biological parents of the children, police said.
Police identified the children as Geneicey Madrigal, 6; Michael Allen Madrigal, 9; Francisco Benjamin Madrigal, 10, and Jose Javier Madrigal, 12.
The investigation began the evening of Sept. 12, when Forest Park officers were dispatched to the 1400 block of Rock Cut Road in the Sheraton House Apartments. There, Rivera told officers that her ex-boyfriend had taken her four children without her consent.
Delk said the father had traveled to Mexico and initially left the children with his relatives before retrieving them, then dropping them off at their maternal grandmother’s home in San Luis Potosi.
“Once the children were found, once the family down there found out what was happening and (the father) had fled the United States, they were very cooperative with taking care of the children and returning them to their mother,” Delk said.
Relatives who live in Corpus Christi, Texas – who also had never met the children before -- traveled to Mexico and returned the youngsters to the United States on Sunday, then drove them back to Georgia. By Wednesday afternoon, the kids were reunited with their mother.
In a news release issued Wednesday evening, Forest Park thanked six agencies that helped police bring the Madrigal children home: the Clayton County Sheriff’s Fugitive Squad, U.S. Marshals Service, GBI, FBI, Diplomatic Security Services and National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
As for the children’s father, Delk said, his whereabouts are unknown. But he remains a wanted man in Georgia. Unconfirmed reports last placed him in Mexico.
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