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Amber Alert Girl missing from N.C. found in Washington after chase, crash

April 2, 2017 at 11:43 p.m. EDT

A girl who was missing from North Carolina was pulled in good condition Sunday night from a car in the District after an Amber Alert was issued for her.

Police had pursued the car to the area of the Tidal Basin, where it crashed, authorities said. They said Arieyana Forney, 11, who had been listed as missing and apparently abducted from North Carolina, was found in the car. The car’s driver was taken into custody, said D.C. police Capt. David Sledge.

“I heard a loud thud,” around 8:20 p.m., near Maine and Independence Avenues SW, said Mark Czerner, a local man who was in the area photographing the cherry blossoms. That, he said, was probably the sound of the car crashing into another vehicle.

After the crash, Czerner said, he saw police with guns drawn approach the car .

Someone was pulled from the driver’s seat, he said. Then, he said, police pried open the front door on the passenger side.

Two more people were pulled out, he said, and one appeared to be the girl. She sat on a curb next to a D.C. police officer, and she was crying, he said. From what he could gather, she was crying about deaths.

In North Carolina, the Charlotte-Mecklenberg police tied Sunday night’s events to the deaths of two people in Charlotte, N.C. earlier Sunday. They said one was Curtis S. Atkinson, Sr., who was 63, and the other, Ruby B. Atkinson, 62.

It was their son, Curtis Atkinson Jr., 36, who was driving the car, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police said.

The 11-year-old girl was the niece of Curtis Atkinson Jr., the Charlotte police said. A Raleigh televison station said the slain couple were her guardians.

She was “ in good health” after being recovered, the police in North Carolina said.

In a statement issued early Monday, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police told how the matter was brought to an end. The key event, apparently, occurred about 8 p.m. when they said D.C. police received a call from someone they identified only as a female.

The caller, according to the police in North Carolina, said she was in the car that was involved in the Amber Alert incident.

In her 911 call, she gave an approximate location, and, according to the Charlotte police, the D.C. police went there.

The D.C. officers began searching for the vehicle listed in the Amber Alert, and, the Charlotte police said, after finding it, they tried to make a traffic stop.

But the car did not stop, the Charlotte police said, touching off the chase that ended near the Tidal Basin.

No one was seriously injured, the Charlotte authorities said.

They said Curtis Atkinson Jr. was “immediately arrested.” They said he was a suspect in the deaths of his parents.

The Charlotte police said a woman was also found in the car. They said they were trying to find out what if any connection she had to Sunday’s events.