[xtypo_dropcap]S[/xtypo_dropcap]itting in an unmarked SUV, Keith Prewitt peered at the house he was led to after six months of investigating. After hours of waiting, the garage door opened and a car drove out. Inside, he saw the three-year-old boy.
Seeing him, the father accelerated, and a chase ensued. Because Prewitt was unfamiliar with the area, the father lost him, and he returned to the house to wait. When the car returned, Prewitt blocked them with his SUV and rescued the child.
“This boy was taken when he was one year old from his mother, and it had been two years. When they were reunited I was there and the boy actually recognized his mother and ran to her,” Prewitt said.
District Attorney Investigator Prewitt has spent the last 23 years in law enforcement and works for the District Attorney’s office in Kings County, California. He specializes in rescuing children who were kidnapped by one of their parents, leaving the other parent searching for their missing child.
His work can span the globe. He deals with people who will cross borders, change their identity, and brainwash their children to avoid being found.
The case of the boy he rescued after his stakeout is just one of many he has worked on. It played out like a horror story—a husband and wife couldn’t have children, and they plotted to have the husband get a girl pregnant and steal the child for their own.
The father was an American citizen working as a miner in Peru. His wife lived in the United States. He met a local girl, “they start this relationship and this girl is thinking she’s going to marry him and have his children and everything,” Prewitt said.
They had a baby, and one year later, the husband’s mother came down to Peru. They had a local doctor tell the mother to stop breast feeding and to let the child sleep with the grandmother. “This whole time, the mother of the suspect and the father of the child, his mother, they were plotting to get this child,” Prewitt said.
They tried sneaking the boy out through the airport twice, but Peruvian authorities wouldn’t let them, because they had not heard from the mother. Later, the grandmother left, and the father sneaked the child out across the Ecuadorian border. The mother called to find out where they were, and “he acted like he was just down the street going to the market or something, but he was skipping from country to country heading back to the U.S.”
Once back in the United States, the father and grandmother went into hiding. They skipped across various states, and warrants were issued for their arrest back in Peru. The real problem, however, was that law enforcement wouldn’t take the case as none of them could show they had jurisdiction. They later found the grandmother lived in Kings County, and that’s where Prewitt came in.
"It took six months of interviewing and contacting people, and surveillance and such before I finally got a break and found the boy in the county next door to us,” he said.
Continued on page 2… Parental abduction
