AFFTON, MO — St. Louis County police say a report that a 5-year-old girl was left in a running vehicle that was then stolen was a hoax, and detectives now expect charges against two women involved.
The case triggered an Amber Alert for a child identified as Aleise Dawson after a report that she was taken shortly before 8 a.m. local time. By Monday afternoon, police had canceled the alert after concluding that no child had actually been abducted. Investigators said the person who first made the report later recanted after what they described as an intense investigation.
Police said they are treating the matter as a false report and are moving toward criminal charges.
Police say the missing-child story fell apart under questioning
St. Louis County Police Lt. Col. Jerry Lohr said the account began to unravel when detectives started asking additional questions about the supposed disappearance. He said officers quickly focused on inconsistencies in the story and the lack of evidence that a child had ever been missing.
According to Lohr, one of the women told police she had been caring for her dead sister’s child, who had been left in her car before that vehicle was stolen. Lohr said the woman’s roommate gave a similar explanation. But once detectives contacted other family members, investigators determined that version of events was not true.
Lohr said police were not dealing with a real abduction, but with a false claim that drew a major emergency response. He said the department takes such reports seriously because they divert time and personnel from other urgent needs.
Why detectives became skeptical so quickly
Lohr said several details pushed investigators toward the conclusion that the child had not been abducted. Police did not have a photograph of the child, and they saw no evidence of children’s clothing or anyone else reporting sightings of the girl.
Those missing details mattered, he said, because they were among the indicators that something in the initial report did not add up. At the same time, investigators confirmed that a vehicle had been stolen, which made the overall story appear more believable at first glance.
Lohr said detectives continued pressing for answers as the search unfolded. He said the combination of no photo, no sightings and no corroboration from family members helped convince investigators the child was never in danger because she had never been missing.
Amber Alert canceled after a stolen car was found
The St. Louis County Police Department said officers responded as they would to any child-abduction report, searching for the child and the vehicle linked to the complaint. A spokesperson, Vera Clay, said officers were told a guardian had placed the child in the car, gone inside a home to retrieve something and then returned to find the vehicle gone.
Police later located the car several blocks away, about two hours after the 911 call. By then, investigators had already begun to question the accuracy of the initial account. Once the report was determined to be false, the Amber Alert was canceled.
Authorities did not say who had the stolen vehicle or how it was recovered, but they did say the car’s theft was real even though the child-abduction claim was not. That distinction became central as detectives worked to separate the stolen-car crime from the false missing-child report.
Police say a false report can drain critical resources
Lohr said police devote substantial manpower and time to cases involving missing children, which is why the department reacts quickly when such a report comes in. He said the false claim forced officers to use resources that would otherwise have been available for other emergencies.
“It’s important to note the amount of time and resources and the allocation of our resources that go into something like this,” Lohr said during a Monday afternoon briefing. “We take this very, very seriously.”
Police also stressed that the danger to the public is not only the falsehood itself, but the way a misleading report can pull officers, dispatchers and investigators into a large-scale search. In this case, the department said it wants accountability for anyone who helped create the hoax.
What remains under investigation after the hoax was exposed
Investigators said they are still looking into why the false missing-child story was told in the first place. Lohr said police do not know whether panic played a role or whether the false claim was meant to create a stronger response after the vehicle was stolen.
He said he could not speak to the motive behind the report, but he made clear that detectives believe the account was fabricated. The department’s next step is to seek charges for filing a false police report against the two women it says were involved.
For now, the case stands as both a stolen-vehicle investigation and a false-alarm child-abduction probe. Police said their work showed that the child never existed as a missing victim in the case that prompted the Amber Alert.
How the false alarm developed in Affton
Police said the initial call came from Affton, a St. Louis County community, after the guardian reportedly left the child in the car and went inside briefly. When the vehicle disappeared, officers were dispatched and the Amber Alert process began.
From there, the response widened quickly as detectives, patrol officers and other personnel searched for both the car and the supposed child. The department said the intense scrutiny, including follow-up interviews with family members, exposed major gaps in the story.
By Monday afternoon, police had reached the opposite conclusion from the one that launched the alert: the car had been stolen, but the reported abduction was not real. Detectives said that distinction will guide the charges they now expect to pursue.
