A 2-year-old girl who disappeared Friday night from her great-grandparents’ home near Youngstown was found alive Sunday evening in a nearby field.
Authorities found Rainn Peterson, cold but apparently doing OK, about a half-mile from where she had been reported missing. She was being taken to a hospital for evaluation.
Searchers on horseback had combed through fields while a helicopter hovered above Sunday in the hunt for Rainn in an area near the community of North Bloomfield, just north of Warren and Youngstown near the Pennsylvania state line. Authorities concentrated the search around the home in rural northeastern Ohio, going through wooded areas, backyards and drainage pipes.
Trumbull County Sheriff Tom Altiere said early Sunday, before Rainn was found, that there were no signs of foul play. Deputies had searched the family’s home several times and had given polygraph tests to the toddler’s relatives, he said.
Search dogs on Saturday briefly picked up Rainn’s scent just down the street from where she was reported missing, the sheriff said.
Rainn and her two brothers, ages 3 and 4, were staying with their great-grandparents on Friday when they reported her missing.
Rainn’s mother, Brandi Peterson, said her children had been staying with the couple because she was moving into an apartment. She said her grandmother was in the kitchen and the three children were with her grandfather in another area of the house when the toddler walked away.
“She’s 2 years old and goes to strangers,” Peterson told WFMJ-TV in Youngstown before her daughter was found. “She goes to anybody. She is just an innocent little girl.”
The sheriff said the family had cooperated with investigators and there were no signs of violence at the home.
