A 2-year-old girl was safe and back with her mother Tuesday while her father, who allegedly snatched her during a supervised visit at The Grove on Christmas Eve, was behind bars after both were discovered in Palm Springs, police said.
Lucia Perry and her father, 31-year-old Jack Perry, were found about 9:30 p.m. Monday, said Lt. David Legaspi of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Van Nuys Station. The girl was reunited with her mother, and Perry was booked into the Van Nuys jail on suspicion of child concealment, he said.
Police in Van Nuys received a tip Monday night from a citizen who saw a police flier on little Lucia’s disappearance and recalled seeing the father and daughter in Palm Springs, said Officer Ricardo Hernandez of the LAPD’s Media Relations Section.
Van Nuys police called the Palm Springs Police Department whose officers found the father and daughter in an apartment Jack Perry had rented under a fictitious name, Hernandez said.
The child has been returned to her mother and Perry is being held in the Van Nuys Jail lieu of $40,000 bail, the officer said.
“I never felt so happy in my life,” said the girl’s mother, Elise Perry, as she held the smiling child in her arms during an afternoon news conference at the LAPD’s Van Nuys Station. “I want to thank everybody for taking the time and looking at her photo … and for social media, everybody kept reposting and reposting.”
Elise Perry thanked the Los Angeles and Palm Springs police departments, adding that she and her daughter celebrated Christmas Tuesday.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,” she said.
The person supervising the visitation of Lucia Perry and her father, who does not have legal custody of the toddler, lost sight of them about 5 p.m. Thursday at The Grove shopping center, according to the LAPD.
Perry is a resident of the Santa Monica area, and the child’s mother lives in the San Fernando Valley, said Lt. Jim Gavin of the LAPD’s Van Nuys station.
The child and her father were last seen Sunday at a hotel in Beverly Hills, according to Gavin. He said Perry was considered a potential flight risk, in part because he is a British national, comes from an affluent family and has access to private aircraft.
“They don’t fly commercial. They’re known to fly private,” the lieutenant said.
The child’s father also has a “minor criminal history,” having been arrested in Los Angeles for driving on a suspended license and in Las Vegas on suspicion of forgery, Gavin said.
—City News Service