4-Year-Old Child Missing: Miami Police

Miami Police continued the search Saturday to find a 4-year-old girl who went missing right outside her Little Haiti home.

Officers went door-to-door, handing out flyers with a picture of the little girl, while her family begged for her captor to return the girl.

"Bring my sister back," her sister said. "What would you do with a 4-year-old? Bring her back."

According to police, the girl was last seen at about 4 p.m. Friday while playing with her sister and other kids behind a fence outside her family's home at 36 Northeast 64th Terrace.

"I don't know who would come to take my daughter, I don't know," said  her father.

On Friday, a search chopper circled the skies, while bloodhounds, using a scent from her backpack, sniffed the ground below. As the hours wore on, authorities were wary that their odds of finding the toddler were growing slimmer.

"We will continue as much we can, trying to think of new things that we haven't touched on as of yet," said Miami Police spokeswoman Frederica Burden. "Our window is closing in."

Initially, their efforts turned up no leads. As the girl's family gathered, the Miami Police Department's Special Victims Unit conducted a grid search, which spanned several blocks in all directions.

Police said the missing girl's mother was inside her first-floor apartment at the time. Though it appears the children were unsupervised, authorities said a neighbor was keeping watch over the kids from across the street.

At some point, the other children said they left the girl all alone on her tricycle in the fenced-in area. When they returned, the bike was still there, but she was gone.

The kids told her family she was gone, and they began searching for her on their own before calling in police. Several hours later, the toddler's mother and father were taken to police headquarters for informational interviews.

While police were busy looking for the girl, so were neighbors.

"I don't even know the people," neighbor Lorsesia Charles said. "I was just hoping to see the mother so I could pray with her."

The girl was last seen wearing a black and blue shirt, purple shorts and knee-high black socks. Her hair was in braids. She weighs about 40 pounds and is approximately 3-and-a-half feet tall.

A family friend said she had seen a suspicious man near the child earlier in the day.

"This guy, we've never seen him here before, and he was going back and forth," said a family friend. "He had on a black and white stripped shirt, blue jeans and some orange tennis shoes on."

Anyone with information on her whereabouts is urged to call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-8477.

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