On Thursday evening, around 70 local residents were involved in the search for the child missing in Kazdanga, the State Police reported to the agency.
A seven-year-old girl went missing around 8:00 PM from a yard in Kazdanga.
Law enforcement reported her disappearance to the media around 10:30 PM, and shortly after 11:00 PM, the police announced that the girl had been found.
This was the first case in Latvia where a mobile alert system was activated in connection with a missing child. Shortly after the girl was found, a corresponding notification was also sent out.
The police noted that the successful search was not related to the mobile alert, as residents had already organized themselves and started searching beforehand.
The police emphasize that there was unprecedented self-organization and responsiveness from the community during the search – a total of up to 70 people participated. The State Police expresses gratitude to everyone who took part.
A representative of the State Police reported that the girl was found indoors. According to the portal liepajniekiem.lv, she was discovered in the apartment of a neighboring house, where she was hiding under a bed. The girl was found by the apartment's owner – her friend's grandmother – who noticed a foreign child's hat on the bed. Meanwhile, the girl's friend was sitting on the bed and pretending not to know anything.
The missing girl's mother speculates that the child might have been upset because she did not allow her to jump on the trampoline. The girl disappeared at the moment when her mother went into the apartment for ten minutes. In the end, the girl was found not far from home, and her life and health are not in danger.
