Two missing children rescued from trailer as police arrest babysitter on kidnapping charges

Atlanta police officers rescued two children from a locked trailer, where they were found with a babysitter who has been accused of kidnapping them and keeping them for nearly two days.

After being reported missing on Saturday night, Zola Cooper, 4, and her 11-month-old sister, Norah Cooper, were found Monday afternoon during an intensive search of an apartment complex.

Eventually, police heard the cries of a baby inside a white trailer that was parked inside the complex.

Body camera video released by the Atlanta Police Department showed officers using a cinder block and bolt cutters to break into the trailer, where they discovered the children with 42-year-old Lakesha Brown. Both children were crying as officers entered and carried them to safety.

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According to an arrest warrant obtained by FOX 5 Atlanta, it was 97 degrees Fahrenheit when the officers found the children.

Police also said the cluttered trailer had no air conditioning and only had an overhead ventilation system. Despite that, the kids were "reunited with their mother in good health," police said.

Brown was arrested and charged with two counts of kidnapping and two counts of first-degree cruelty to children, court records show.

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After Brown was arrested, Atlanta police discovered she had an active arrest warrant for failing to appear in court for a separate child kidnapping case in Alabama that involved a newborn baby, People reported.

Brown denied being involved in the August 2021 kidnapping of the 4-day-old child, but authorities said she posted pictures of the boy to her social media.

In the Atlanta case, the girls were reported missing at around 10:00 p.m. on Saturday night by their mother, Elica Redding, according to FOX 5 Atlanta.

Redding had left the girls with Brown, whom she described as a friend of hers, at around 6 p.m. so she could go out dinner, police said. She called 911 roughly four hours later, explaining that Brown still had not returned the kids.

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"[Brown] told me there was an accident, but she's not answering her phone," Redding told the dispatcher, according to audio first obtained by FOX 5 Atlanta.

Redding said Brown told her that they were taken to a hospital, but when Redding called every hospitals she could, there was no record of her kids being admitted at any of them.

Redding told police she had met Brown about a year earlier through a Facebook group for pregnant women. Brown allegedly represented herself as someone who offered babysitting services, FOX 5 Atlanta reported.