Toddler Abducted From Eddie Long's Ga. Church Campus Found by Good Samaritan
A two-year-old toddler who briefly went missing Tuesday from the parking lot of Bishop Eddie Long's New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Dekalb County, Ga., was recovered by a Good Samaritan hours later.
"I was just asking God to put a shield over that little girl," Melba Williams, who found toddler Myrai Robinson hours after she was abducted, told local news station WXIA-TV.
Williams was walking to her car on her lunch break when she found Myrai Robinson crying alone in a stolen 2010 Dodge Caravan around 1 p.m. in the parking lot of the nearby Lithonia High School, where it had been abandoned.
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"She was standing up in the front seat crying," Williams said of the two-year-old, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Moments before finding the toddler, Williams had heard the Levi's Call, or Abmer Alert, on the radio and knew the description of the missing vehicle and the missing child. She chose to call 911, even though she was worried she was being too nosy.
"I told her, 'Mama's coming, it'll be OK,'" Williams said, adding that she kept telling herself "It could've been one of mine.'"
Williams, 59, has seven grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
Robinson was abducted from the parking lot of Long's New Birth Missionary Baptist Church's fitness center around 9:30 a.m. on Oct. 16.
She had been left unattended in a minivan while her caregiver, Rhonda Rivers, 44, ran inside the building for about five minutes.
Rivers left the keys in the ignition and the door unlocked, and when she returned to the parking lot from the fitness center, the still unidentified suspect had taken the vehicle and the toddler.
Since the recovery of the child, Rivers has been arrested for second-degree child cruelty and reckless conduct, according to the DeKalb County Sheriff's office.
Bishop Eddie Long's New Birth Missionary Baptist Church has yet to make a statement on the child abduction.
The toddler was delivered to her mother, Charity Gibson, unscathed on Tuesday afternoon.
