John Jefferson
Princess Ilunga (Jefferson County Jail).
An exasperated Illinois mother called cops to say her car had been stolen with her 4-year-old daughter inside.
Police issued an Amber Alert for the missing girl, setting off a frantic 9-hour search.
But it turned out the girl was home all along, cops allege, and now the girl’s mother, 37-year old Princess Ilunga, is facing a charge of filing a false report to police.
According to police in Rock Island, a city of nearly 40,000 along Illinois’ border with Iowa, Ilunga dialed 911 just after 6 a.m. Jan. 26 to say she left her car running in front of her home with her daughter in the back seat when someone stole it.
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Police responded and located the car a few blocks away, unoccupied, about 15 minutes later. The Rock Island Police Department immediately posted the girl’s photo in a post that was shared more than 40,000 times. Illinois State Police sent out a statewide Amber Alert.
Cops set up a command post and canvassed the area using drones and searched nearby homes. But cops found the girl in an alley not far from her home shortly before 3 p.m. on Jan. 26, the same day she was reported missing.
After an investigation, police determined the girl was never missing and Ilunga had “intentionally hidden” her daughter.
“From the moment the 911 call was made, our officers were lied to, with the only thing being true was that the car had been stolen after she left it running,” Rock Island Police Chief Timothy McCloud told reporters at a press conference last week.
McCloud said after reviewing body camera footage from the incident, it turned out the girl was in the room when police were first questioning the family. He said Ilunga told police the girl was a different daughter and had her other children to call her by her Swahili name. Ilunga even pointed to the girl and said she “looks just like her sister,” the police chief said. She also had her kids take off the girl’s pink coat she was reportedly wearing when she was “abducted.” During this time, she was speaking to the kids in Swahili.
“Fortunately, we have an officer who speaks fluent Swahili,” he said. “We were able to determine that Ms. Ilunga was lying to us from the very beginning.”
After a police detective who was stationed outside the home left to go back to the station, Ilunga allegedly put the pink coat back on the girl and took her to a nearby alley where she was “found” by two women searching for her, according to McCloud.
Ilunga allegedly left the area after the incident with her seven children. Police issued a warrant for her arrest on Jan. 30. Hours later, the cops pulled over Ilunga in Johnson County, Wisconsin, which is outside of Milwaukee, some 200 miles away from Rock Island, police said. The father of the seven children came to pick them up, while Ilunga was jailed and is awaiting extradition back to Illinois.
Police are unsure of the exact motive for Illunga’s alleged scheme but McCloud speculated that it could have been because she thought cops would take the stolen car report more seriously if there was a missing child inside.
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