The 14-year-old Clayton County girl kidnapped from her home early Tuesday morning is back home with her family, and law enforcement officials are holding two men in connection with the abduction, authorities said.
Information released Wednesday afternoon revealed a connection between the teenager’s mother and one of the suspects. They were previously arrested on drug charges together, authorities said.
For nearly 36 hours, state, local and federal officials searched for Ayvani Hope Perez, while family members tried to raise a $10,000 ransom her captors demanded. Tuesday’s early morning abduction, by two men who broke into the family’s Ellenwood home through a back door and demanded money and jewelry, touched off a massive search that ended around noon Wednesday.
“This is a good day for the (Perez) family, and more importantly for Ayvani,” Clayton County Police Chief Gregory Porter told reporters Wednesday afternoon. “She’s been reunited with her family. She’s in good health.”
FBI spokesman Stephen Emmett said Ayvani was found “at a residence” in Conyers.
Officials from the Clayton County Police Department, the FBI, the GBI the Clayton County District Attorney’s Office and U.S. Homeland Security Investigations were tight-lipped about how they combined to find the teen and what they did to track the two men in custody.
Authorities identified Wildrego Jackson, 29, and Juan Alberto Contreras-Rodriguez, 40, as suspects, however, saying more arrests are expected.
Contreras-Rodriguez, authorities said, is being held on federal immigration charges.
Jackson faces a federal charge of conspiracy to commit kidnapping.
According to prison and jail records, he served roughly a year of a five-year cocaine possession sentence from 2006 to 2007, has had more than a dozen arrests in Fulton County dating back to 2006 on charges ranging from cocaine possession and child cruelty to assault and attempted burglary.
Authorities would not say where the men were being held.
“We are looking for others,” Porter said of suspects still at large.
Roughly 150 law enforcement personnel were involved in the search and investigation, he said.
The mother of the kidnapped girl was once arrested with one of the two men who were arrested in the girl’s kidnapping, records show.
Maria Corral was arrested in 2012 with Contreras-Ramirez in a major marijuana trafficking bust in McDonough in which 500 pounds of the drug were seized. A federal official confirmed Wednesday that Contreras-Ramirez was arrested under the name Juan Alberto Contreras-Rodriguez in the kidnapping case.
“It is the same guy,” said Vincent Picard, spokesman for ICE.
Corral was never indicted in the drug trafficking case and the charge against her was dismissed shortly after she was scooped up with four men, including Contreras-Ramirez, in Henry County by the Flint Circuit drug task force. The charges against Contreras-Ramirez were dismissed last January after the search of the Henry County home was ruled unconstitutional by Superior Court Judge Arch McGarity because the agents lacked a warrant.
Corral, who changed her name back from Perez after her divorce in 2007, was with Contreras-Ramirez outside the home when the police made the arrest, said Michael Katz, the lawyer who represented Contreras-Ramirez. He said it was unclear if the couple was romantically involved.
“They were just talking in the driveway,” he said. “I think she just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Wednesday afternoon, Lucille Howard, who lives next door to Ayvani, said she was one of several people who greeted the girl after she was brought home.
“She looked tired, but not shaken up,” Howard said. “She was smiling. A look of relief was all over her.”
Howard’s family recently moved to the neighborhood and she said she didn’t know the teen’s family well. But Howard, a mother of two young girls, said she had been praying for the girl’s safe return.
— Staff reporters Tammy Joyner and Jeremy Redmon and staff photographer Ben Gray contributed to this report.
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