New York investigators are confident that whoever allegedly kidnapped two Amish sisters that were later found safe on Thursday will be arrested, the Associated Press reported.
On Wednesday evening, 7-year-old Delila Miller and 12-year-old Fannie Miller went to help a customer who pulled up in a light-colored car at their family's farm stand in rural Oswegatchie, St. Lawrence county.
It is not clear what happened to the girls when the car showed up, but they disappeared and were gone until they were found Thursday evening 15 miles from their home in Richville.
St. Lawrence County District Attorney Mary Rain said that while she cannot comment on what happened, the information the girls provided should lead to an "arrest sooner rather than later."
"They have provided us with information we're now acting on," Rain said Friday, the AP reported. "I really can't discuss what happened when they were in captivity."
Rain said the girls are healthy but did not release more details out of fear of compromising any possible prosecution.
The Miller sisters, the youngest of 14 children, live in the second-largest Amish settlement in New York state. Authorities in Oswegatchie had a bit of trouble with the search due to a lack of photographs of the girls to hand out, the result of an Amish custom not to use modern technology, the AP reported.
A translator who spoke the family's language, a form of German known as Pennsylvania Dutch, was needed to help sketch an image.
Dot Simmons, the Miller family's neighbor, told the AP the girls usually tend to the customers who come to buy the farm's fruits and jams. The girls reportedly went down to the suspect's car while the rest of the family was in the barn milking cows.
Rain said the kidnapping will unfortunately change things in a town where children often walk to school on their own.
"One thing that comes from this is that people learn this can happen in a small town," Rain said. "I think the public will take precautions, and that's a sad thing."
