KyLea Fortner and Shaeleen Fitch-Fortner were last seen waiting to board a school bus on April 27, 2015, according to the New York State Police. The teenagers, who are sisters, had been living with a foster family when they went missing.
This week – months after they vanished – the pair were finally located again, at a home in Vestal, New York, state police said in a news release. A “family acquaintance of the victims” has been charged in connection to the disappearance.
Amanda Hellman, 29, was arrested for second-degree kidnapping, according to the release. She was later remanded to the county jail without bail.
“Eleven months goes by . . . and you think the worst,” Broome County District Attorney Steve Cornwell told the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin on Thursday. “State police have honestly been working this case every single day. They didn’t give up.”
The Press & Sun-Bulletin reports:
A felony complaint filed in Vestal Town Court said Hellmann abducted the girls from the area of the Susquehanna Valley High/Middle School on Conklin Road in Conklin.
For presumably much of the next 11 months, authorities say, it’s alleged Hellmann kept the sisters at her house, at 327 Torrance Ave., and prevented them from returning to the foster home where they had been living.
“Hellmann . . . conducted numerous acts to prevent law enforcement from returning the two children to their foster parents,” the complaint states.
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“During this investigation, the New York State Police received and investigated numerous investigative leads relative to the girl’s location,” the state police news release read, before also noting that “information was developed” that suggested the girls, who are now ages 16 and 14, were in the home.
The sisters were turned over to family services officials, according to the state police news release.
A message left with the Broome County Public Defender’s Office was not immediately returned Friday morning.