Mom Arrested In Wisconsin After 4-Year-Old's Kidnapping Hoax: Police

ROCK ISLAND, IL — A 4-year-old Rock Island girl believed to have been abducted in a car theft on Jan. 16 turned out to have been safe at home during a frantic nine-hour search by hundreds of police officers and citizens in the Quad Cities. Now, the girl's mother is in custody in Wisconsin, where authorities said she was stopped by the state patrol with her seven children in a vehicle.

An arrest warrant was issued this week for the mother, Princess Ilunga, 37, on a felony charge of filing a false police report, Rock Island Police Chief Tim McCloud said during a news conference Thursday morning.

By Friday morning, police announced that Ilunga had been arrested just after 5 p.m. Thursday, during a traffic stop by the Wisconsin State Patrol in Jeffersno County, Wisconsin.

On Jan. 16, police say Ilunga reported that her vehicle had been stolen when it was left running outside with her daughter inside it while Ilunga went back into the house. Ilunga called 911 at 6:07 a.m. to report that stolen vehicle and her “abducted” daughter.

>>> Missing Rock Island Girl Believed Abducted Found Safe: Police

An Amber Alert was issued when the vehicle was found abandoned eight blocks away about 20 minutes later, with no signs of 4-year-old Blessing. The child turned up in an alley later that afternoon.

“From the moment the 911 call was made, our officers were lied to, with the only thing being true that the car had been stolen after she left it running,” McCloud said.

The police chief stated that the search for the 4-year-old involving a mobilization of local, state and federal law enforcement was not the result of a misunderstanding due to a language barrier. McCloud said Ilunga speaks English but with an accent and is easy to understand.

Ilunga confirmed “six times” to the 911 dispatcher that her vehicle had been stolen, with her daughter strapped into her booster seat.

“We always start by believing. There is simply no legitimate reason to fabricate this kind of emergency,” McCloud said. “From the minute our first responding officer arrived, Ms. Ilunga could have told the truth, because [body-cam footage] inside the residence showed Blessing no longer wearing the pink coat she had been described as wearing.”

Ilunga could not provide a photo of her daughter. Rock Island police reached out to the school district that provided the child’s ID photo. The mother also initially refused to allow police to search the house for the 4-year-old girl.

McCloud said there were seven young children, all close in age, inside the residence. By then, Blessing’s pink jacket had been removed. While Ilunga spoke English to the officers, she spoke to the children in Swahili, and had allegedly told the children to address Blessing by her Swahili name, Baraka, to go along with the ruse.

“There was no reason to believe Blessing and Baraka were the same person,” McCloud said “The mother said Blessing looked just like her sister, and told us not to speak to Baraka because she did not speak English well.”

Blessing Found 'Remarkably Unharmed And Warm'

When Blessing “showed up remarkably unharmed and warm” after the daylong search, the investigation turned to where the 4-year-old had been for nine hours. He said Ilunga and an aunt were often distraught on police body cam footage.

“Fortunately, we have a Rock Island officer that speaks fluent Swahili,” McCloud said. “We watched [body-cam footage]. From the moment we talked to them, they were very distraught. They were believable.”

Police think when a detective assigned to the family's home left momentarily, the little girl's pink jacket was put back on, and she was steered to the alley to be found. The child was found minutes later by two women who had been in the area.

McCloud said the case has taken them all by surprise. Police theorize that Ilunga could have reported that her daughter was inside the vehicle, so that police would look harder to find it.

“This isn’t something you would typically conceive of. The [question] is why, and we just don’t have an answer yet.”

>>> Arrests Made In Rock Island Car Theft, 4-Year-Old's Abduction: Police

Five arrests were made later that evening in connection with the car theft, including an 18-year-old who was charged with aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and possession of a stolen vehicle, in addition to four juveniles.

The 16-year-old boy accused of stealing Ilunga’s vehicle was charged with motor vehicle theft and kidnapping. The kidnapping charge has since been dropped, but the motor vehicle theft still stands. The other juveniles were each charged with possession of a stolen vehicle.

As officers tried to understand why Ilunga would invent such a story, the family stopped cooperating with the investigation. On Thursday, McCloud said their last contact with Ilunga was two or three days earlier, and that she and her family had since vanished.

“They shouldn’t be running, let’s put this behind us,” the police chief said. “We have leads we're following up on.”

McCloud could not answer the cost of the massive search, only to say that it involved hundreds of police man-hours spent walking door-to-door distributing photos of the little girl, while other 911 calls were put on hold.

“I understand the public is going to be a little upset,” he said.

Mother Arrested, Children In Father's Custody

On Thursday, police asked anyone who knows the family’s location to contact Crime Stoppers. Early Friday afternoon, Rock Island police issued a news release saying that Ilunga was taken into custody in Wisconsin after a traffic stop for a suspended registration and equipment violation.

Her seven children were in the vehicle at the time of the stop and were later taken to the Lake Mills Police Department to be cared for until arrangements could be made with their father, Richard Aoci, police said. Aoci took custody of the children just before 10 p.m. Thursday.

Ilunga is being held at the Jefferson County Jail pending extradition to Illinois.