Search Goes on for Abducted Amish Girls

Two young Amish girls went missing from their farm stand in northern New York yesterday evening, and police are calling it an abduction.

The girls, 6-year-old Delila Miller and 12-year-old Fannie Miller, were wearing blue dresses, blue aprons and black bonnets when they went to wait on a customer who drove up to the vegetable stand at around 7:20 p.m., police said. However, enough time has elapsed that the girls could now be in different clothing.

Nearly 200 police, troopers, forest rangers and Border Patrol officers are in on the intensive search, according to news reports. Dive teams were also called in to search the nearby Oswegatchie River, wwnytv.com said.

The search spread out from the St. Lawrence County town of Oswegatchie, including roadblocks in Ogdensburg, Gouverneur, Potsdam and Jefferson counties.

St. Lawrence County Undersheriff Scott Bonno told syr.com that a witness—a neighbor—says he saw what looked like a white, four-door sedan interacting with the children at the roadside stand. A passenger threw something into the back seat and then got in back before the car drove away.

The girls have Pennsylvania Dutch accents, police said. The 12-year-old speaks English.

The Amish population in New York state is growing, according to amishamerica.com, as families and groups are drawn by lower property costs for good farmland. The girls’ community of Heuvelton, a highly conservative Swartzentruber Amish community near the Canadian border, is the second-largest in the state, the website said.

Police are also going through sexual offender records in the area, said wwnytv.com.

The St. Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office issued this Amber Alert.