Cleveland Police Confirm 6-Year-Old Girl Found In Home Is Amanda Berry's Daughter
By Chuck Sudo in News on May 7, 2013 2:25PM
Amanda Berry and her sister
The 6-year-old girl who was rescued along with kidnapping victims Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight in Cleveland Monday night has been confirmed to be the daughter of Amanda Berry, according to police who spoke with Cleveland's ABC News affiliate WEWS.
The other two suspects arrested in connection with the kidnappings are Pedro Castro, 54, and Oneil Castro, 50, brothers of 52-year-old Ariel Castro. It's believed the home where Berry, her daughter, DeJesus and Knight were found was owned by Ariel Castro.
At a news conference in Cleveland this morning, Cleveland Police said there is no history of housing code violations on the building in the past decade, and no records of neighbors reporting suspicious activity at the home where the women were found. Police responded twice to calls to the home where the women were found, once in 2000 and the other in 2004.
The 2004 incident was related to a Department of Children and Family Services complaint against Castro, a driver for the Cleveland Municipal School District, where he allegedly left a child unattended on his school bus. (Charges were not filed against Castro in the incident.)
Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said at the news conference this morning the women's absence has "plagued their families and the city" for years.
"We now have to ask the following questions," Jackson added. "Why were they taken? How were they taken? And how were they undetected for this amount of time?" Cleveland Deputy Police Chief Ed Tomba wouldn't offer details of the ongoing investigation, except to say police are searching other properties for potential evidence in the case.
“The real hero here is Amanda. She’s the one who got this rolling,” Tomba said. “We’re just following her lead.” Indeed, the transcript of Berry's 911 call is harrowing and heroic.
The saddest news from this is that Louwana Miller, Amanda Berry's mother, isn't alive to be reunited with her daughter. Miller died of a series of health ailments in 2006; Cleveland councilwoman Dona Brady said Miller "literally died of a broken heart." In 2004, Miller appeared on Montel Williams's talk show where celebrity psychic Sylvia Browne told Miller that Berry was dead.