Shocking moment Detroit twin sisters aged 14 who vanished without a trace a month ago are found by cops at hotel with 30 year-old man
Police bodycam footage captured the incredible moment two 14-year-old twin sisters who had run away more than a month ago were found by authorities.
The girls were found at a hotel in Allen Park, Michigan, where they were staying with Marcus Peoples, a 30-year-old man with a criminal background.
They were first reported missing by their father on March 8, after they both failed to return to their home on Robson Street in Detroit.
On April 8, Detroit authorities announced that the twins had been found and reunited with the rest of their family.
The bodycam footage showed officers standing outside the girls’ hotel room, which was located at the Comfort Inn on I-94.
Police bodycam footage captured the remarkable moment Allen Park officers found two missing twin sisters. The twins, 14, had run away from their Detroit home over a month ago and their whereabouts were unknown. On April 8, they were found at a Comfort Inn, where they were staying with Marcus Peoples, a 30-year-old with a criminal background; in the photo: the twins, with blurred faces, left; Marcus Peoples is on the right in the blue sweatshirt with the BMW logo
Police quickly separated the twins from the 30-year-old.
“Here, you two, here,” the officer said with authority and removed the girls from Peoples’ path.
“You go with him,” the officer said, shoving the 30-year-old aside.
The video then showed the girls sitting on the steps of the stairs.
The officer was heard telling them, “I know who you are. I know who you are’.
He added, “I know who you’re looking for, and we need to solve that tonight.”
Authorities had previously been unable to locate the ninth-graders because they did not have their cellphones with them.
The father had begged the local community to help him find his daughters. Thanks to clues from a school counselor, authorities learned the girls were still in the area.
But a month passed without any update on the whereabouts of the fourteen-year-old twins.
People were told to keep an eye out for the sisters and contact Detroit’s 12th Precinct if they had any information about the girls’ location.
The discovery of the twins was made possible by a series of curious and seemingly unrelated events, starting with the theft of a Nebraska teenager’s bank card.
People used the information from the stolen bank card to purchase the hotel room the twins were staying in. As soon as he used the card, the Nebraska teen received a warning from her bank.
The teen told her mother, Megan McQuain, who then called the hotel and Allen Park police.
When the police responded to the call, they were prepared for PIN fraud.
But one of the officers happened to recognize the missing twins from a previous encounter.
McQuain was surprised to learn that her call led to the discovery of two missing teenagers.
“I didn’t know it was bigger than it is until yesterday and it was quite a shock to say the least.”
Drawing a lesson from the experience, she said, “If you see something, say something, because if we hadn’t checked our credit cards right away, and if I had just waited until the next day, that’s what it would be like. “Maybe it was too late.”
“You never know,” McQuain added.
The twin sisters told officers they did not know Marcus Peoples and that he bought the hotel room just for them so they would have a place to stay.
Peoples told police that his brother sent him the stolen card information and that he did not know the information was stolen.
In the bodycam footage, the officer asked the twins why they had run away from home.
“Don’t worry about it,” one of the twins replied, before adding, “It’s none of your business.”
Later in the video you heard one of the girls ask questions about foster care.
“If runaways don’t want to go home, what would they do about it?”
“Yes, what could they do about it?” The other twin intervened.
“Put us in a foster home?”
Police responding to a call at the Comfort Inn in Allen Park thought they were responding to a call about debit card fraud. To purchase a hotel room, Peoples used debit card information from a Nebraska teenager. When he used the card, the teenager received a warning and told her mother, who called the hotel and the police. When police responded to the call, one of the officers recognized the missing twins and separated them from Peoples
The officer responded by saying that they had to “go home first,” and then they would have to “figure that all out.”
A few days before they went missing on March 8, the twins had attempted another escape, disappearing from their grandmother’s home in River Rouge.
Their sister posted on Facebook at the time: “Please help me find my 14-year-old sisters.”
Their father was able to locate them, but just a few days later they were missing again.
After the twins were found safe on April 8, authorities say Marcus Peoples was charged with fraud, using a stolen bank card and harboring missing juveniles.
The people’s bond was set at $150,000.