Kidnapped California girl found alive after seven years

Washington, July 16 (ANI): A girl kidnapped from California was found alive seven years later in Phoenix.

A California girl audaciously taken away by her teenage aunts has been found alive in Phoenix seven years later but no arrests have been made due to conflicting stories and sealed court records.

Amber Nicklas is back in state foster care after authorities from California, Arizona and the FBI found her living under a different name in Phoenix with a couple who initially claimed they had adopted her.

"She appeared well nourished and all that," ABC News quoted Captain Patrick Maxwell of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, Norwalk station as saying.

"She was not enrolled in school, though," he added.

How the 7-year-old girl came to Phoenix is still a mystery.

At the time of her kidnapping, Amber was just a year old and was living with a foster family after she was forcibly removed from her grandmother's care along with several other children.

Amber was abducted on September 21, 2003, from a Norwalk Chuck-E-Cheese restaurant by her mother's three teenage sisters during an approved visit.

Two of the teens were caught almost immediately and arrested. The third aunt, 13 years old at the time, got away with Amber.

The two eldest aunts were sentenced to serve time in a juvenile facility, Maxwell said, but in a move that has complicated the investigation into the kidnapping ever since, a judge granted one of the aunt's permission to seal all records pertaining to the case. (ANI)