Police said that 11 children ages one to 15 were rescued in the US state of New Mexico after officers raided a dilapidated compound occupied by armed men.
Two men were arrested after police found them and the children in what one officer called “the saddest living conditions and poverty I have seen,” as part of an operation connected to a months-long search for an abducted three-year-old, the Taos County sheriff’s office said.
The investigation began late last year on the opposite side of the country in Jonesboro, Georgia, where 39-year-old Siraj Wahhaj of the state’s Clayton County was accused of kidnapping his toddler, who was ultimately not found.
The mother told police that her child, who she said experienced seizures along with developmental and cognitive delays, went to the park with Wahhaj in December last year and never returned.
On Thursday last week, Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe issued a search warrant describing “a makeshift compound surrounded by tires and an earthen berm” in a subdivision in the rural community of Amalia, where Wahhaj and Lucas Morten were thought to be hiding.
The FBI had provided information and surveillance on the spot, but “didn’t feel there was enough probable cause to get on the property,” Hogrefe said.
“That all changed for me when a message was forwarded to us from a Georgia detective that we reasonably believed came from someone at the compound — the message sent to a third party simply said in part: ‘We are starving and need food and water,’” Hogrefe said in a statement.
Hogrefe said he planned “a tactical approach for our own safety, because we had learned the occupants were most likely heavily armed.”
On Friday morning last week, a dozen officers began the “all-day” operation, discovering hidden beneath New Mexico’s scrubland the two men with an AR-15 rifle, five loaded 30-round magazines and four loaded pistols, including one in Wahhaj’s pocket.
The men had refused to follow verbal direction, police said, adding that the raid went without major incident or injuries, even as Wahhaj needed to be “taken down.”
Police said that they found many more rounds in the ramshackle hideout, which they described as “a small travel trailer buried in the ground covered by plastic with no water, plumbing, or electricity.”
“The only food we saw were a few potatoes and a box of rice in the filthy trailer, but what was most surprising, and heartbreaking, was when the team located a total of five adults and 11 children that looked like third-world country refugees,” Hogrefe said.
“Not only with no food or fresh water, but with no shoes, personal hygiene and basically dirty rags for clothing,” he said.
Morten was charged with harboring a fugitive and Wahhaj was booked without bond on his Georgia warrant for child abduction.
Three women — thought to be the children’s mothers — were also detained for questioning. They were released pending further investigation.
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