Missing 10-year-old girl found alive at Gainesville department store

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©Associated Press, March 9, 2000

GAINESVILLE -- A missing 10-year-old girl was found alive Thursday morning at a department store in Gainesville, said Darryl Williams, a deputy with the Gilchrist County Sheriff's Office.

Jessica Rodriquez had been missing since Monday when she was snatched by a stranger as she got off a school bus with her younger sister.

She was being taken to the Alachua County Sheriff's Office in Gainesville, Williams said.

Williams said it was unclear when the girl would be reunited with her family. He also said police are still searching for the man suspected of taking Jessica.

"She is alive. She came inside the Wal-Mart store alone," said Mohmmad Ashraf, an assistant at the Gainesville department store.

On NBC's "Today," the child's mother, Jennifer Graham, offered a tearful appeal to the kidnapper Thursday morning.

"I love my daughter and we are all human. And we are praying for both of you. And please bring my baby back home to us," Graham said.

For five generations, the family has found north Florida's isolated woods, northwest of Gainesville, to be a safe place to raise their children.

But in broad daylight and just a few hundred feet from the family's cluster of trailer homes, the stranger grabbed the 10-year-old girl from the long dirt driveway leading to her home.

"Here in rural Gilchrist County, we don't have crimes of this nature occurring," said Sheriff David Turner. "This is an extreme rarity. This is very traumatic for the family and community. This is completely out of the norm."

Law enforcement officers and Jessica's extended family had been searching for the girl since Monday afternoon. Jessica's uncles combed through the woods Wednesday, emerging dusty and bloodied from briar scratches, while her mother and aunts made tearful public pleas for her return.

Calls flooded in from people who think they saw the young, narrow-faced man police believe took the girl.

Jessica had just gotten off the school bus with her sisters, ages 4 and 8. The bus driver never saw the man, nor the green Jeep Cherokee police said he was driving.

Jennifer Graham, the girl's mother, said she normally met her daughters at the bus stop as a safety precaution. The girls were the last students on the bus, and Graham said she knew it wasn't a good idea to let her guard down.

But on Monday, she had fallen asleep on the couch after working a night shift at a nearby fast food restaurant and caring for her youngest, a 6-month-old boy. Her fiancee, Thomas Keeley, a mechanic, was working in the yard and heard the girls' scream. He ran toward them just in time to see the man back out of the driveway and speed away, police said.

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