Missing Girl Found After Police Dragnet

Sun., Feb. 15, 1998

From Staff And Wire Reports

A 7-year-old Lakewood girl who disappeared after school last month was found in a receiving home in Las Vegas after a series of police raids.

Toni Banks, a first-grader at Southgate Elementary School in Lakewood who vanished Jan. 20, was turned over to police after initially escaping a law enforcement dragnet Friday.

Authorities had feared the child had gotten lost after she got on a wrong school bus after school, but suspicions shifted to her father, who lives in Las Vegas, because of an ongoing custody dispute.

Las Vegas police have been trying to find the girl for several weeks, Pierce County sheriff’s spokesman Curt Benson said.

The father was not in custody Friday.

Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney John Ladenburg said he might seek custodial interference charges against the man.

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