Police body camera footage captured the incredible moment authorities found two 14-year-old twin sisters who had run away more than a month ago.
The girls were found at a hotel in Allen Park, Michigan, where they were staying with Marcus Peoples, a 30-year-old man with a criminal record.
Her father first reported her missing on March 8, after the two failed to return to their home on Robson Street in Detroit.
On April 8, Detroit authorities announced that the twins were recovered and reunited with the rest of their family.
In body camera footage, officers could be seen standing outside the girls’ hotel room, which was at the Comfort Inn off I-94.
Police body camera footage captured the extraordinary moment Allen Park police officers found two missing twin sisters. The 14-year-old twins had run away from their home in Detroit more than a month ago and their whereabouts were unknown. On April 8, they were found at a Comfort Inn, where they were staying with Marcus Peoples, a 30-year-old man with a criminal record; In the photo: the twins, with their faces blurred, on the left; Marcus Peoples is on the right wearing a blue sweatshirt with the BMW logo.
Police quickly separated the twins from the 30-year-old man.
“Here, you two, right here,” the officer said authoritatively and pulled the girls out of Peoples’ orbit.
“Go with him,” the officer said, directing the 30-year-old to the side.
The video then showed the girls sitting on the steps of the staircase.
The police officer could be heard telling them: ‘I know who you are. “I know who you are.”
He added: “I know who’s looking for you and we’re going to have to figure that out tonight.”
Authorities had previously been unable to locate the ninth-grade students because they did not have their cell phones with them.
The father had pleaded with the local community to help him find his daughters. Thanks to tips provided by a school counselor, authorities learned that the girls were still in the area.
But a month passed without any update on the whereabouts of the fourteen-year-old twins.
People were ordered to keep an eye out for the sisters and to contact Detroit’s 12th Precinct if they had any information about the girls’ location.
The discovery of the twins was made possible by a curious and seemingly unrelated chain of events, beginning with the theft of a Nebraska teenager’s debit card.
Peoples used the stolen debit card information to purchase the hotel room where the twins were staying. As soon as she used the card, the Nebraska teen received an alert from her bank.
The teen told her mother, Megan McQuain, who then called the hotel and the Allen Park Police Department.
When police responded to the call, they were prepared for debit card fraud.
But one of the officers recognized the missing twins from a previous encounter.
McQuain was shocked to learn that his call led to the discovery of two missing teenagers.
“I didn’t know it was bigger than it is until yesterday, and it was quite a shock, to say the least.”
He took a lesson from the experience and said, ‘If you see something, say it because if we hadn’t checked our credit cards right then and there and if you had waited until the next day, you might have been too late.’
“You never know,” McQuain added.
The twin sisters told officers they did not know Marcus Peoples and that he only bought them the hotel room so they would have a place to stay.
Peoples told police that his brother sent him the stolen card information and that he did not know the information had been stolen.
In the body camera footage, the officer asked the twins why they had run away from home.
“Don’t worry,” one of the twins responded, before adding, “it’s none of your business.”
Later in the video, one of the girls can be heard asking about foster care.
‘If the fugitives don’t want to come home, what would they do about it?’
‘Yes, what could they do about it?’ The other twin intervened.
‘Put us in foster care?’
Police responding to a call at the Comfort Inn in Allen Park thought they were responding to a call related to debit card fraud. To purchase a hotel room, Peoples used information from a debit card that belonged to a Nebraska teenager. When she used the card, the teen received an alert and told her mother, who called the hotel and the police. When police responded to the call, one of the officers recognized the missing twins and separated them from Peoples.
The officer responded by saying they would “have to go home first” and then they could “figure all that out.”
A few days before their disappearance on March 8, the twins had made another escape attempt, disappearing from their grandmother’s home in River Rouge.
At that time, her sister posted on Facebook: “Please help me find my 14-year-old sisters.”
Their father had been able to locate them, but a few days later they were missing again.
After the twins were found safe and sound on April 8, Marcus Peoples was charged with fraud, using a stolen debit card and harboring missing children, according to authorities.
People’s bail was set at $150,000.