The two young girls kidnapped by a man suspected of killing of their mother and older sister were released from a Tennessee hospital yesterday after a two-week ordeal that ended in the suicide of their captor.
Alexandria Bain (12) and her sister Kyliyah (8) left Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis at about 6:15am, a hospital spokeswoman said. “I’m so glad they’re okay,” she said.
The girls were hospitalised Thursday night after they were found in northern Mississippi where Adam Mayes (35) had been hiding with them. Mayes, briefly the most-wanted fugitive in America, killed himself with a gunshot to the head when police closed in and ordered him to surrender, according to authorities.
Mississippi state game wardens had come across Mayes and the girls in the woods behind a church in Alpine, Mississippi, 75 miles (120km) from the rural western Tennessee town of Whiteville, where the girls lived.
“I told them it’s going to be okay,” Union County sheriff Jimmy Edwards said he told the girls. “I gave them a big hug.” – (Reuters)