A young teenaged girl had been missing about six weeks and had disappeared outside her school and miraculously is found alive 500 miles away.
Alisa Petrov, 15, has gone missing April 21 after being transferred to school in Utah and boarding a train and asking people to help her get to Las Vegas.
She was not heard of again until she entered Stetson Hills police station in Colorado Springs on Sunday night and introduced herself.
Police reported that the teenager was in good health, yet it has not been resoundingly established where she was or whether she was being detained against her own wish.
Police said Alisa has informed her parents about her whereabouts and they are planning with South Jordan Police to get her back home.
Days after she disappeared, her desperate parents Olga and Nikolai Petrov got the first clue of a dreadful secret life in their daughter when her secret iPad was found on her dresser.
In the dusty old box, the teenager pulled up the long forgotten machine and was chatting with three of the three men who were accused of sending her messages that were graphic and explicit in nature. All the three are in jail.
Nikolai wrote in Facebook that Alisa was located and the family would soon visit her in Colorado.
That Alisa is found and we are all very happy about it is looking forward to seeing her he wrote.
Special to South Jordan Police Department who worked on weekends; and to the Salt Lake City FBI who assisted them.
Thanks to all of our friends who assisted and helped us.
On April 21, Alisa was taken to Canyon Grove Academy, a school in American Fork, some 32 miles below Salt Lake City.
Rather than attend a classes, she purchased goods at a local Speedway gas station and persuaded a man at the station to take her to a local train station.
At Provo, where Alisa got off the train, some 14 miles south of American Fork, Alisa asked more than one person to assist in getting her a bus ticket to Las Vegas, where she was to meet Matthew Nicholas Menard, 35.
Last week, Olga, told DailyMail.com how her daughter had saved approximately $1,000 in pocket money and on her birthday, and would not spend it after turning 15 on April 16, only five days before she ran away.
Either somebody is helping her and we don not know where or who… I am not calculating that for the worst, she said.
That means she is with another person and we can not tell whether it is a good or a bad person.
A South Jordan Police Sergeant Shaun Becker added that the investigation was not finished simply because Alisa was taken – ‘it is just the beginning’.
At a press conference, he said they would keep doing all they could in their quest to determine what occurred.
This was a missing girl situation and we wanted to find and punish bad actors in that situation.
When others become available, we shall also do the same and hold them responsible also.
Alisa has not revealed her reasons of running away, but exchanges on Discord and snapchat between Alisa and Samuel Teancum Mitchell, 41, one of the other men that were charged with communicating with her, showed strong hatred that Alisa reportedly harbored towards her parents.
In their conversation, the minor gives suicide and she dislikes her parents, police reported in a probable cause affidavit to arrest Mitchell.
Mitchell told that he had been talking to a girl online and she was angry with her parents and had begun to harm herself with cuts.
Alisa also asked part and sarcastically that Mitchell should ‘kidnap her’ on several occasions. Seven days prior to her running away, she text him where she would be, according to the affidavit.
The two supposedly attempted to organize a rendezvous as Alisa writes: like r we [for real] meeting?? like please confirm please before tonight confirm if we r meeting pls bring condoms.’
Mitchell responded that he was unable to see her because he was ill.
He then said she had told police she met an FBI agent in Florida and was interested in that man, according to the already-filed affidavit.
That man is said to be Menard, a technology sales manager, but not an FBI official, who is said to have spent months conditioning Alisa to have sex.
Alisa had sent a message to Mitchell the day before she went missing telling him at 12.34 am: IM running away, please do not contact me.
This is supposedly because Alisa was no longer planning to see Menard when he was on his business trip to Las Vegas, and then fly to Los Angeles, and then his hometown in Miami.
In affidavits, police described the grotesque correspondence between Alisa and Menard that went back to January 17.
The two never interacted, and his phone was confiscated by police in Miami on April 30 when it was determined that correspondence occurred between the two on the iPad, belonging to Alisa.
On May 20, Menard had two counts of aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor, enticement of a minor, and three criminal counts of solicitation; he had turned himself in eight days later.
Yet another man Alisa was reportedly talking to is William Taylor Glines, 37, of Texas City, Texas, was arrested on May 8 and is currently detained.
Glines faced a charge of aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor, attempted aggravated exploitation of a minor, sexual exploitation of a minor, enticement of a minor, and criminal solicitation.
Police in Texas also accused him of possessing over 50 child sexual abuse pictures or videos. He has not pleaded.
The affidavit of probable cause explained some prior and horrific chats between Glines and Alisa, in which he allegedly persuaded her to send nude photos and videos.
Mitchell had been arrested last Wednesday and hurled to Salt Lake County Jail on five counts of sexual exploitation of a minor.
Police did not find child porn of Alisa on his phone, yet it is claimed that they discovered disturbing communications to two other girls – one of them was revealed as 15 and the other, who seemed to be around 12 years old, naked in photos and videos of both girls.
Olga remarked that she and her husband paid close attention to keep their daughter safe and taught her that it was dangerous to talk to strangers on the internet.
We also checked her phone regularly and there was nothing outrageous. It was all as it should be, just schoolmates, neighbors, she said.
We did not imagine that she could talk to strangers like this… she was a sneaky girl, and we had not realized. I wish we had realized this much earlier and could assist her.’
