Two 12-year-old girls who went missing during a high school football game in northwest Missouri have been located safe in Indiana, and a man is now facing kidnapping charges in connection with their disappearance.
Dustin Allen Hill, 22, of Arizona, has been charged with two counts of first-degree child kidnapping. Each charge is punished by ten to thirty years in jail.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol issued an Amber Alert at 2:20 a.m. Saturday after the students went missing from Rock Port High School, located roughly 100 miles north of Kansas City. They were subsequently “safely recovered” in Indiana.
The probable cause statement states that the girls last left the football field during the third quarter of the game. When they failed to return home, their parents notified the police. Investigators later discovered one girl’s phone lying on the grass near the field’s fence line, while the other girl’s phone was turned off. The last text message received on that phone was from Hill.
Investigators followed Hill’s phone as it traveled east on Highway 69. Investigators connected him to a hotel room, where he checked in on Thursday using the phone number. The hotel’s surveillance camera showed him in a white SUV with Arizona license plates. His vehicle was also captured on tape at a gas station in St. Joseph, with a small girl in the passenger seat. Later, officers tracked the SUV to a Target parking lot, where they found Hill and the two missing girls. He was then brought into prison.