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4-year-old girl who was subject of Amber Alert was safe at home the whole time, police say

4-year-old girl who was focus of Amber Alert was never abducted, police say
4-year-old girl who was focus of Amber Alert was never abducted, police say 01:08

CHICAGO (CBS) -- A 4-year-old Rock Island girl who was the subject of an Amber Alert earlier this month was never abducted, and was safe at home the entire time, police said.

Rock Island Police Chief Tim McCloud said the girl's mother, Princess Ilunga, repeatedly lied about her daughter being abducted when her car was stolen while it was left running, and even claimed her missing daughter was a different child when police saw her in the home.

"This is not just a big misunderstanding. This is not the result of a language barrier. From the minute our first responding officer arrived, Ms. Ilunga could have told the truth," McCloud said on Thursday. "This was, by all accounts, an intentional deception that wasted the time and resources of six local law enforcement agencies, the Illinois State Police, the FBI, and the [U.S.] Marshals."

An Amber Alert was issued on Jan. 16 when Ilunga's car was stolen from outside her house, and she called 911 to report that her 4-year old daughter, Blessing Aoci, was in the car.

McCloud said Ilunga told dispatchers six times that Blessing was in the car when it was stolen, adding that Ilunga "speaks very good English, albeit with an accent. She is easy to understand."

Although the stolen car was found within 20 minutes, Blessing was not inside.

"We considered every possibility; that she had been transferred to another stolen car, that she had gotten out of the stolen car and was now lost, or the nightmare scenario that she had been abducted by someone else," McCloud said.

It wasn't until nine hours after she was reported missing that Blessing was found in the alley outside the back door of the family's home.

McCloud said police were immediately suspicious when Blessing turned up safe, because she showed no signs of distress or exposure to the cold, and couldn't explain where she'd been.

"Despite the relief that we all felt at her safe return, our investigators then had to begin working to answer the question 'Where was Blessing during those nine hours?'" McCloud said.

Further investigation revealed that Blessing had been safe at home the entire time, and that her mother had concealed her real identity.

"From the moment the 911 call was made, our officers were lied to, with the only thing being true was that the car had been stolen after she left it running," McCloud said.

After reporting the girl missing, her mother claimed she couldn't provide picture of Blessing, and police had to get a picture of her from her school.

McCloud said Ilunga also initially refused to let police search the house for Blessing, and when officers later saw the girl inside the house, Ilunga claimed it was a different daughter named Baraka.

A Rock Island police officer who speaks fluent Swahili helped uncover the deception by listening to body camera footage of Ilunga telling her other children to go along with her deception and refer to Blessing only by her Swahili name Baraka.

McCloud said Ilunga has seven children, including Blessing, and many of them are close in age, with "strong familial resemblances," so at the time police had no reason to doubt her claims that Blessing was a different child.

"We have tried to understand why she would invent this story, but when confronted with all the information, the family stopped cooperating with the investigation," McCloud said.

The family has since vanished, and McCloud said an arrest warrant has been issued for Ilunga, charging her with one felony count of filing a false police report.

Five teens were arrested in connection to the case on the day Blessing was reported missing. McCloud said any kidnapping charges they were facing will be dropped, but they will still be prosecuted for stealing the car.

McCloud said police don't know why Ilunga would have lied about Blessing being kidnapped, other than possibly thinking by reporting she was in the stolen car, police would work harder to find it faster.

"That's the only thing we can think of that's plausible at this point, but since they won't give us a statement, I think only they are going to be able to answer that question," he said.

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