Missing girl found in car trunk
By Eric Louie
Record Staff Writer
Published Friday, September 6, 2002

Stockton police Thursday arrested two sisters on charges of holding a teen against her will after the 14-year-old, missing almost a year, was found in the truck of the women's car following a traffic stop.

Police arrested Margaurite Smoote, 19, and Letitia Jordan, 26, Thursday evening. They were expected to be booked on charges including false imprisonment and child endangerment, Stockton police spokesman Doug Anderson said. A third woman was being questioned by police.

Police would not release the girl's name.

Details of the events leading up to the arrests were confused late Thursday. Police were still interviewing the girl into the night.

It was unclear if the girl, whose mother had reported her as a runaway in October, had been held against her will.

Police believe she was. But the mother of the two women arrested said the girl was hiding from her family when police found her, and she was not being held against her will.

Thursday, police received an anonymous tip the girl was at the home the women lived in in the 8600 block of Acapulco Way. The caller claimed the girl was being forced against her will into a car.

Following her daughter's disappearance, the girl's mother had told police the teen may have been staying with the women at the Acapulco Way home, Anderson said. Police searched the home several times throughout the year, but there was no sign of her.

Detectives arrived Thursday and saw a car in the area, but not the girl. The two sisters got into the car and drove off. Police followed and pulled the car over on West Lane north of Eight Mile Road.

During a search, police found the teen in the trunk. She was not bound or hurt, according to police.

Margaurite Smoote, the mother of the two women who were arrested, who also lives at the Acapulco Way address, sat in a white minivan Thursday evening as two uniformed officers stood guard outside waiting for more officers to arrive with a search warrant.

Smoote said the 14-year-old never lived at the home. The older Smoote said she had met the teen's mother last summer in a battered-women's shelter, and the families became friends.

* To reach reporter Eric Louie,
phone 546-8296 or e-mail elouie@recordnet.com

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