Carlee Russell could be sentenced to one year in jail. On Oct. 11, Russell pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor counts of false reporting to law enforcement and falsely reporting an incident.
State prosecutors recommended she spend one year in jail and pay $17,974.88.
On July 19, the department revealed details of Russell’s disappearance.
The police department worked with the U.S. Secret Service to discover searches from her cell phone leading to her disappearance. Russell reportedly searched the terms, “You have to pay for an amber alert or search”; “how to take money from a register without being caught”; “Birmingham bus station”: “one-way bus ticket from Birmingham to Nashville”; (the movie) “taken”; and information about Amber alerts on her work computer.
They also shared that during her initial 911 call where she reported seeing a missing child walking on I-495, Russell traveled 600 yards, which is about six football fields.
“Six football fields, to think that a toddler, barefoot, that could be 3 or 4 years old, could travel six football fields without getting in the roadway, without crying, it’s very hard for me to understand,” Hoover Police Chief Nick Derzis said during the press conference.
Russell was interviewed by police following her return home on July 15. She told authorities that she was kidnapped by a white male with orange hair and placed in the back of a tractor trailer. Russell told police that she heard a woman and a baby. At some point, she said she was able to escape briefly from the tractor-trailer, but she was captured again and placed in a car before being driven to a house. She said she was undressed and probably photographed. While at the house, she said a woman fed her cheese and crackers and played with her hair.
She said she was eventually able to escape and returned home by foot.
On July 18, the parents of Carlee Russell shared their thoughts on what they have…
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