A suspicious Missouri school official led police to a woman who allegedly kidnapped her own grandson 13 years ago.
Sandy Hatte, 60, is accused of taking the boy from his Florida home in 2000, when the child was an infant. She recently tried to enroll him in a Livingston County, Mo., school, but an official saw red flags, ABC News reports.
"They had some concerns about an individual who had enrolled a child into school and had some concerns if they were the actual parent," Livingston County Detective Eric Menconi told the station.
The official was right. Authorities now believe that Hatte kidnapped the boy more than a decade ago while his father was at work. When she tried to send him to the school, she claimed to be his mother, WDAF reports.
Hatte and her grandson were homeless and lived with a Chillicothe, Mo., man who offered them a place to stay. The man reportedly had no idea she was a kidnapping suspect until police showed up at his house.
The exact path Hatte and the boy took over 13 years on the run remains unclear. The St. Joseph Post reports that the pair had only been in Livingston County for about 30 days. After Hatte's arrest, the boy was reunited with his father, who now lives in Alabama.
"It was a good reunion," Merconi told ABC News. "You could tell within the first three minutes they hit it off pretty well. Since then, I've been on the phone with the dad and from what I'm understanding, it's going pretty well."
Hatte was arrested on Sept. 18 on suspicion of child abduction. She was held on a $25,000 bond at the Davvies-Dekalb Regional Jail in Pattonsburg, Mo.
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