Paislee Shultis, a young girl kidnapped two years ago at the age of four, has been found alive in her home state of New York.
According to NBC New York, she was found in a makeshift room underneath a closed staircase that led to the basement of a home in the town of Saugerties in upstate New York.
Paislee went missing from her home in Cayuga Heights, near Ithaca, on July 13, 2019. Police have long suspected her biological, non-custodial parents, Kimberly Cooper and Kirk Shultis Jr., of kidnapping the girl, but previous searches of their home in Saugerties came up empty.
However, police got a Valentine’s Day tip that the girl was in the home, which prompted them to return with a warrant. Read more: Shocking video shows hundreds of birds drop from the sky in Mexico Saugerties police Chief Joseph Sinagra told reporters one of the officers searching the home noticed something odd about the basement steps that made him take a closer look. “He took a flashlight and looked between the cracks between the steps.