Seven years after being reported missing, a woman was found alive on Monday inside a motel room in Inkster, Michigan, after her stepmother gave police a tip that led to her location, the Michigan State Police announced.
The woman’s stepmother told officers that the victim “was being held against her will” at a motel, and detectives found her at the Evergreen Motel in Inkster, a western suburb of Detroit, according to the police announcement.
According to police, officers heard the woman screaming and crying from inside a motel room before they rescued her. The unidentified woman, who is in her 30s, was taken to a hospital for a medical evaluation before being reunited with her family.
Investigators who searched the motel seized drugs, cellphones and a firearm, according to the news release. A suspect was also identified in the case, but no one was taken into custody.
Detectives are trying to determine if human trafficking was involved, according to the news release.
“This may turn out just to be a domestic violence type of deal. This may turn out to be a big human trafficking thing. And it may turn out to be that she finally decided she wanted to go home and just called her stepmom,” Michigan State Police Lt. Mike Shaw told WDIV-TV in Detroit.
Investigators are also working to determine what happened when the woman disappeared seven years ago, Shaw told WWJ-TV in Detroit.
“It may take us nowhere. It may not be something that we can charge criminally, but at least we got her out of the situation,” he said.