The High Street Abduction

The two-year-old girl has been found alive and well and her teenage abductors arrested. But what motivated the teenagers to take her? Investigations at the teenagers' home reveal unusual and worrying things, particularly when their internet search history is examined.

The police are desperately searching the city centre for the two-year-old child and her kidnappers. Six miles away an officer from another team is looking for two teenage truants. He hears the description of the suspects on his radio and makes the connection. They now have names for the suspects and information about them that offers clues as to where they might be found.

CCTV footage shows a worrying turn of events. Police are now active across the city but the clock is ticking. In any major criminal investigation officers think the first hour is critical. The police are now 50 minutes behind the girls and they believe the toddler is in real danger.

The police arrive at the store and begin to look through CCTV footage. They see images of the child leaving the store with two teenage girls. Immediately they remember the case of James Bulger, a toddler led away to his death by two young boys in 1993. The search for a lost child has become a critical incident and investigations are stepped up.

Child abduction is very rare - and when other children are responsible it can be particularly hard to comprehend. So when police in Newcastle upon Tyne were told that a missing toddler was last seen talking to two teenage girls, one notorious case from the 1990s immediately came to mind. As the kidnappers crossed the city, police used hundreds of CCTV cameras in a desperate hunt for the missing girl. Andrew Bomford tells the inside story of what happened.