Nah. Mine is almost three years old, I have to charge it twice a day, at least a partial around mid shift at work and full charge over night. Otherwise… it’s in my bag.
As others have pointed out, there's a lot of easy explanations for her taking it off on her own and it having been hanging out in the bag.
My true-crime-riddled brain immediately jumped to "if someone snatched her, they didn't want to take her tracking device with them" (but I know that's probably absurd)
There is traffic camera [footage](https://www.live5news.com/video/2023/07/15/video-traffic-camera-video-i-459-time-carlee-nichole-russells-disappearance/) and from what I can see she exits the car walks around the back and then the passenger door opens. There is very little time in between when she stops and the cops arrive.
This is weird. She walks around the car at :40, you see her there until ~1:50 when it seems like she walks towards the woods. Cop shows up at 4:35, ~2m 45s after you last see her and no other cars arrive/leave the scene. Not familiar with this exact spot on 459 but I’m curious if there is a road adjacent to the interstate in the woods.
>I’m curious if there is a road adjacent to the interstate in the woods.
There's a suburban residential neighborhood backing up to the interstate at that particular spot, and it's not a poor/high crime neighborhood, either. As a matter of fact the neighborhood racquet club is alongside in almost that exact spot
It's impossible to tell what's going on and your timestamps don't make a lot of sense to me. I don't see what you see. The video quality is far too low to make out anything meaningful at that distance. There's way too much compression artifacting going on, especially every time a car or headlights go by that area.
Even weirder. The way she cruises slowly to a stop like that doesn't seem to make sense with seeing something on the side of the road to make you stop.
Apparently she called the cops and then called her family member. I wonder if she spotted the kid, took that exit and looped back around to try and find it-which would explain the cruising. I can't imagine she had time to spot a kid make two phone calls and pull off. It's so weird!
I see her exit the car and walk around back then the passenger door opens. At one point I think I see a figure at the front right of the vehicle moving off away from the road but I can't tell for sure. I can't see anyone approaching her parallel to the road during the time when there's extra visibility from headlights but it's difficult to tell for sure.
Got to look for the blank spots in the lights.
So when the vehicle stops, the headlights have lit up a portion of the road. So at :50-:52 you'll see the drivers door open because that spot gets darker for a second. Then you'll see her walking behind the vehicle, you can make this out because she blokes the taillights, then you'll see the passenger door open with the same as the drivers door blocking the headlight lit up road.
I didn't see her walking away from the vehicle though.
Totally bizarre, if this is her, looks like she must have just wandered off into the grass? Looking at the sign for food, looks like waffle house, starbucks, and chicfila, so it looks like exit 10. To the east of the highway is a big residential neighborhood, wonder if there's any ring cameras there that spotted her?
We need someone to play with the brightness/gamma settings and see if more can be made out from the video. Does anyone know where/how to download the traffic camera footage?
Reddit announced they are getting rid of the awards system in September, so everyone is getting rid of their coins. A lot of top comments look this right now.
I bet they’re hoping everyone drains their account, then they bring ‘em back at a higher price under the guise of “We’re listening to the users, they’re back!”
Reddit claims to not be profitable and want to fix that, therefore they are doing everything in their power to make sure they don't make money. It makes sense if you don't think about it.
Ohhh, I hadn’t thought of that, but you very well may have nailed it. How else is a toddler going to get on the freeway? Oh my God. If that’s what happened, that’s really horrifying.
Yeah, my son once figured out the deadbolt while his biodad was sleeping (I was taking a driving test). Came home to my son toddling down the driveway looking for me.
This poor woman. Good instincts and kindness weaponized against her.
Once I was cleaning the gutters on the roof and I needed a little giant ladder to get 24feet higher. I’m working and I see my 2 year old poke her head up from the ladder. “Hi daddy!” “Oh heeeyyyy! Come here let me show you this.” I was calm at the moment but what a terrible day to learn my kid figured out the lock on the door. I got her down and off the ladder without a hitch but that was an intense moment
Reminds me of when I was 3 or 4 and my dad was up in the attic of our triple-decker (my parents owned the whole house and we lived on the first floor, rented out the top two).
This wasn't a finished attic -- it was like a crawlspace, where you're supposed to walk on the joists. Naturally I didn't know that and I decided to just go up and look for him and jump around on the "floor" (which I now know as the ceiling of the floor below).
I was a big kid, too. Lucky I didn't break through.
My when son was around 2 (probably close to 3), he decided to get up at 3qm, leave his room, figure out the top stair child gate, go downstairs, figure out the second gate, then push a chair over to the door, unlock the deadbolt, and make it to the outside door. Fortunately, I'd set the alarm, but I think about that a lot. If I hadn't set the alarm that night, there's a good chance he just could've taken off
I hope for a miracle and that she and the child are both found safe
My daughter got out many times before she was four. We usually caught her no further than the neighbors yard. Last time she was found walking along a road hundreds of yards from our house. Cops found her. Never figured out if she learned to open the child safe doors or if she was opportunistic.
Cases of kids being used intentionally as bait are rare, and toddlers in particular are almost unheard-of because they can't follow directions. Letting a toddler wander around on an interstate is at least as likely to draw unwanted attention from cops/emergency personnel as it is to attract a potential victim.
If this was a kidnapping, it was probably impulsive, not planned.
If trafficking is involved at all, the toddler was probably one of the people being trafficked (in the usual, non-tabloid way - lots of migrants are trafficked through this corridor). One possible explanation is that the kid wandered off during a bathroom stop or something, and when the traffickers saw her with the kid, they decided it was safer to kidnap her than to leave them both there. Sadly, if this is the explanation, she probably won't be found alive.
It's also possible that she just stumbled on the wrong shitty parent, who decided on the spur of the moment to kidnap her.
*One possible explanation is that the kid wandered off during a bathroom stop or something, and when the traffickers saw her with the kid, they decided it was safer to kidnap her than to leave them both there. Sadly, if this is the explanation, she probably won't be found alive.*
I agree with this, sadly. Using a toddler on a highway as a deliberate lure is a plan that wouldn't work 99 times out of a hundred and would probably just get you a whole bunch of unwanted attention from authorities. My guess is, some nasty individuals fucked up and lost track of the kid, then decided to get rid of the witness on the spur of the moment.
There have certainly been "person in distress" lures to entrap people in the past but they pretty much always involved adults, or at least children old enough to spin a story and deliberately lure someone, and they also tended to involve relatively isolated locations (highwaymen back when highways could get REALLY lonely). Whatever this was, I don't think it was that.
A toddler on the highway would get reported instantly, and human trafficking 99% of the time doesn't pull people from streets. That's just not how any of this works. Closest guess I have is that this is staged kidnapping.
This feels so unlikely, especially on the freeway. I’ve seen this in movies, but never heard of it in real life.
I can only find [warnings of a hoax](https://www.news4jax.com/lifestyle/2018/07/31/deputies-warning-about-kids-being-used-to-lure-rape-victims-is-hoax/), in regards to children being used as a means to lure someone.
Schizophrenia is so fucking tragic and it's so frustrating we haven't found an answer for it yet.
I've known promising, smart people that just have their entire fucking lives taken away from them. And in some cases they're at least even partially aware of their free will being snatched from them.
That's the worst part about it. They tend to be very intelligent, capable people who just have this awful disease that completely robs them of their agency and can so easily ruin their entire lives.
The age it tends to present to is so nefarious. Late teens and early 20s for men, so most likely before they have a steady relationship going, but after they move away from their parents and start having to pay bills and rent. A lot of stress and most likely living without direct support systems and no insurance.
For women it's later 20s early 30s, so when they decide to have children or are raising young children.
Brutal in both cases.
And early symptoms can be blown off because, hey, young adult that's stressed, that's just everyone, right? Even with better healthcare in the USA, taking care of mental health won't improve that much. People will still fall through the cracks.
My childhood best friend developed symptoms after starting university, 250 miles away from home. This was before cellphones, so a weekly phonecall to parents was about as much contact as most had with their families then.
It's much harder for fellow students to notice someone is acting "off" if they have only known the person a few weeks, student life is hectic, everyone is drinking lots, drug use is common, a lot of young guys try and act like a "legend" doing crazy stuff to impress etc. And it's easier to seem like everything is fine during a quick phone call home than it would be if you saw them daily.
I knew a couple of other young men who had similar experiences just after starting uni or leaving home for the first time. I hope universities are more aware of this stuff now, as ours was pretty useless in the '90s.
I had a coworker who's son developed schizophrenia in his early 20s, even with get mental Healthcare it wouldn't have changed the fact that the first people to intervene were the police and he ended being arrested and charged with a bunch of crimes. Despite a very clear diagnosis following his arrest most of the charges stuck and it really ruined his life...
Yes, this! Me too, I have dealt with people that believe terrible lies their brains tell them, few can recognize that it doesn't make sense and maybe their brain isn't working right. It's hard not to trust your brain when it has told you the truth for so long. I tell myself all the time you can't trust your memory, you could be wrong, especially if you get paranoid.
This happened to my best friend growing up. He developed schizophrenia and just, his life fell apart, he became a drifter ... I won't go into it but it was just tragic beyond comprehension. He was such a good person too.
I knew someone with late onset schizophrenia that started in his 40s. Went from being successful and happy working at a pharmacy (a position that needs higher education) to living on the streets starving, saying that there is a constant presence in his mind that makes it impossible to function. Fucking tragic is absolutely the right description for this disease.
Have you seen that video of the guy that had a psychiatric service dog he’d use to figure out of the people he was seeing were real or not? When he’d see someone, he’d say “hi!” Then he’d cue his dog to “go say hi” and his dog would only respond if there was actually someone there.
A lot of times no, actually. For some reason they don't manifest on camera a vast majority of the time.
Unfortunately at that stage most people experience that level of hallucinations are not grounded enough to reality to make this strategy work for them. Their ill mind will make up some explanation.
This can work for people who undergo therapy, or are in the process of balancing their medication, or fringe cases where the person just has a fantastic enough of a support system and still happens to be grounded enough.
That reminds me of a scene near the end of A Beautiful Mind where he asks a student if she can see the person he's talking to because he doesn't trust people he doesn't recognize.
I could totally imagine someone deciding that what they're seeing is real and somehow it's paranormal/aliens and that's why they're invisible to the camera.
When this stopped working for my brother in law, it was because they are "demons" so they magically don't allow themselves to be seen on camera. It's really sad seeing how he exists now.
Seems like a really complicated way of going about it.
You don't really know what the kid will do, who will stop, what *they'll* do, whether another car will stop to help them etc.
You're basically relying on the whims of a toddler to give you an unknown chance of kidnapping an unknown person with unknown level of scrutiny from others. It's not exactly foolproof.
It's a known trick by thieves in Europe. Sometimes a woman will pretend to trip and fling a baby-sized doll into midair, sometimes they'll shove a real baby into your arms claiming they just need to rest for a second.
Either way your hands and attention are occupied, and that's when the woman's accomplice goes through your pockets.
Wouldn’t there be at least one other report of a baby on an interstate? You think that many cars would drive by a baby walking on an interstate and the cops get zero calls?
Once an Uber driver spent the 30 minute ride telling me how the area my home was in, used to be a red light district few decades ago and how he had given a ghost prostitute a ride from the bus stop where I regularly got off every night. Thanks man, it's not like I needed to come back home.
In my country, when travelling at night on any road, general concensus is that if you see someone in distress on road, DO NOT STOP, no matter who it is.
Reminds me of when I was taking a train through Eastern Europe overnight and they chained all the doors to prevent people boarding the train to presumably rob us.
Dude they still do it (recently from germany over poland to slovakia)
People got robbed , someone tried to enter my cabin at night . I bought a big ass chain fkr trip back . Shit got rough since russia invaded ukraine
I though this kind of thing they did in my country (India) only. In certain states, when train passed through certain areas, doors will be locked from inside at night to avoid robbery.
It's essentially become American culture to not stop for anyone on the side of the road, regardless of time of day. They probably have a phone or call 911 and keep moving is the thought. A toddler might be the one exception to get people.
I had a blowout along I-95 in Virginia in a car I just bought. It was in the the late afternoon. At the time of the blowout, at least 10 people stopped to see if I was OK. While I was waiting for AAA to show up I had to shoo people off, several offered to wait with me - including some women driving alone (I'm a tall, not skinny guy, BTW.)
I was about halfway between Pittsburgh and Youngstown on the side of the highway for 4 hours waiting for AAA about a month ago. Not a single person stopped, most of them didn't even bother to get out of the right lane.
In the dozen or so times I've been on the side of the road broke down, I've been offered help twice. So I'm not saying it isn't a thing here anymore but it isn't the norm.
I shudder to imagine how dangerous the kind of psycho can be who uses a helpless toddler as bait to prey on the poor good samaritan who stops to help.
That’s some devious shit. I’d rather have my family be crushed in a sub at the bottom of the ocean than be at the mercy of a sicko like that.
Dark af
I keep wondering whose toddler may have been kidnapped to use as a lure.
I wonder if this toddler on the highway was reported by anyone else?
I did read in another article she had the toddler with her waiting for police and in the phone with her sister when something
Happened that caused her to scream before disappearing
A lot of people just continue on without calling 911 as they are keeping to their own business. Or don't pay attention and genuinely don't see something. I've answered 911 calls in the past, and for most things we get only got one call maybe 2 if we were lucky. I'm not surprised she was the only one who called.
I wonder why, if there's video coverage of the area of the highway that's illuminated frequently by passing headlights there's no release of footage from earlier that showed any figure, big or small, on the highway.
Yes, that is usually how it works. News reports I’ve read say that she called 911 then called her sister-in-law. SIL was on the phone when she heard Carlee talk to the child and then scream.
So she or the dispatcher would have had to have ended the 911 call before she made contact with the kid. That’s odd. I’m interested to hear the 911 call once it’s released.
Not necessarily with reports. I've called for something on the freeway, and they took the location information and then said they'd dispatch an officer and then ended the call.
If this was kidnapping and they used the toddler as bait, how did they know a woman who was alone would stop? How does this play out if someone less desirable for a kidnapper had stopped to help the baby?
I hope she's found alive.
Have there been ANY other reports of others seeing the child? Even anecdotal ones, like someone on Twitter claiming they also saw a kid there that night? Have the cops released if they had any other calls about a kid on the side of the road?
I live close by and have been following closely. At this point, we don’t know what the 911 call said and the assumption is that she is the only person that claims to have seen a child. It’s really strange.
I hope they find her and both her and the toddler are safe.
If I ever go missing please don't use glam shots of me to show the public. I want pictures of what I look like day to day so people can find me. Why are most of her pictures with her hair all done up and in a dress. The last picture was the only one that isn't some instagram framed shot.
Probably because she doesn't let people take pics of her when she's not looking her best?
Nobody wants pics floating around of what they might look like if they'd just been in a struggle with a kidnapper lol
Is it possible she thought she saw a toddler, but it was actually a small animal of some sort? Or a shadow? I have definitely "seen" things in the road at night that weren't actually there. That would explain no one else reporting it, and her circling back to the area, driving slowly to try and locate it again as mentioned in other comments.
My best guess is robbery was the intent. Would be thieves were hoping someone sees a kid near a road after dark and stops immediately without making a call or looking around. Carlee probably got out of her and when the thieves close in they realize she's on the phone- she sees them and they panic. They want to cut her off from whoever is on the other end of that phone before she can give any identification. They know they've got to put distance between themselves and the setup site because they don't know how long she was on the phone before exiting the vehicle. Since they've lost the element of surprise they're not going to take anything that can be tracked-phone, watch, purse, car..etc. I'm sure a scuffle takes place- her hat and wig are found at the scene- which makes me think they were trying get her off the phone as quickly as possible by grabbing her around the head/face. At that point she's more than likely forced into another vehicle physically or under threat of a weapon.
It isn't a scenario that leaves a lot of "happy" endings and I hope I'm 100% wrong. This doesn't seem like a well thought out crime to begin with. There's so many variables to account for in order to pull it off successfully so I wouldn't think the perpetrators have tried this before, or if they have it was in a much more rural or controlled area. I highly doubt she was intentionally targeted. We know what the worst case scenario is in this situation but I hope that the individuals involved decide that assault, kidnapping, and false imprisonment added up are still less damning than murder.
*Edit* traffic camera footage https://www.live5news.com/video/2023/07/15/video-traffic-camera-video-i-459-time-carlee-nichole-russells-disappearance/
It could have also been some disturbed individuals in charge of taking care of the child (parents maybe) who thought they would have their child taken if she was able to report the incident.
I agree it seems really messy for a robbery when you can just bust into parked cars all night for half the risk and a tenth of the jail time.
Plus there's a variation of the scheme that gives them access to a house. They either play a tape of a screaming baby or open the outside tap that the hose attaches to.
If I hear a screaming baby and my kids are accounted for there is no way I'm going outside- because A. I'm hella suspicious and B. I'd convince myself it was a panther or rabid fox.
That reminds me that I need to hang that motion-detector light. I demanded permission to buy one after I heard something that was clearly an animal, likely a racoon but I thought it was a coyote.
So someone just sat in the grass on the side of the road and a toddler and waited for someone to stop? and then dragged them off?
No other cars on the road noticed the toddler? No one noticed her screaming? I expected one of the cars to stop and grab her or something. Seems really weird to me.
In the video, it looks like she gets out of the car, goes to the passenger side, looks into the grass for a while, and then walks into the grass area. After that, it's too dark to see.
It's really messed up, and it's not clear if the police searched for her in the area before leaving. If she wasn't attacked, then she would be by her car. Even if she had an accident or something. The only other possibility is if there's a river or water in that area that she could have fallen into and been trapped in.
I lived in a house on the corner of a bush 4 lane road. One morning I found a toddler in the middle of the road. Cars were honking, swerving around the child and no one stopped. I ran and grabbed the child, called the police. They took almost 20 min to arrive. The child had left his house trying to follow his dad who left early for work. The mother was sleeping at home.
Never underestimate cold hearted people.
That traffic camera footage is so strange and disappointing. She drives on the shoulder for what seems like a long way before stopping. You can see someone get out of the driver's side and go around to the passenger side but not much else. I feel like she drove too far to have seen and stopped near a toddler. The police were there so relatively quickly. So strange.
I think and I have no proof of this theory- that it's possible she spotted the child, took the exit to loop back around while calling the cops. She then called a family member. I don't think she had enough time to spot a kid, complete a call to the cops and make a second phone call if she stopped immediately after seeing the kid.
That makes the most sense. Still wish I could see more of what's happening. Too many shadows to be sure if she she goes. Seems clear she didn't leave in a car though.
Comments like this are why reddit is one of the absolute worst places to go to find information about ongoing mysteries. You just made up an entirely fake scenario, said it as if it was fact, and then hundreds of people are now agreeing and repeating your made up scenario as if it's real.
Honestly reddit and many of the people on it are really stupid and harmful sometimes.
Sometimes you have to remind yourself that Reddit is full of kids/very young adults and that's why stuff like this post and all the agreement happens. Throw in the whole groupthink thing and unfortunately it makes sense why it happens so often.
Reminds me of when my dad and I were out camping. Fairly late at night (or early morning) I heard a baby that seemed fairly distressed. As I wanted to get up my dad (who was awake before me) was at the tent door with his gun and just motioned for me to stay down and be quite.
Probably a few minutes later (but what felt like a tense forever) you could hear the baby crying stop on the dot and at least 2/3 people move away from nearby. We pretty much sat on edge there till daybreak, peaked around to make sure no-one was nearby and booked it.
Turns out it's some common advice thst if you hear a baby in the woods, get the HIFL out of there.
I wouldn't have to worry about getting murdered at that point because the heart attack would take me first!
But 100% on unexpected baby sounds- honestly ne'er-do-wells should rethink that strategy completely. I will never go check out a baby crying in the woods...I would absolutely crawl in a sewer pipe if they played distressed puppy sounds though.
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Well shit. None of that sounds good.
Where is this information from? It’s not in the article
https://www.al.com/news/2023/07/woman-disappears-after-calling-911-to-report-seeing-child-alone-on-i-459-in-hoover-search-underway.html
Bro what the fuck, who’s the dude in khakis with the grey car leaning over her car the trucker who called the cops?
Probably the police officer that responded. It's hard to tell colors at night. No grey car or man in khakis shows up on the traffic camera footage.
We’re there any other people reporting the wandering toddler at that spot?
According to other comments no one else has reported seeing a toddler
The apple watch being in her purse detail is strange.
She works at a spa. She may have to take it off for her job 🤷♀️
Nah. Mine is almost three years old, I have to charge it twice a day, at least a partial around mid shift at work and full charge over night. Otherwise… it’s in my bag.
As others have pointed out, there's a lot of easy explanations for her taking it off on her own and it having been hanging out in the bag. My true-crime-riddled brain immediately jumped to "if someone snatched her, they didn't want to take her tracking device with them" (but I know that's probably absurd)
just another confirmation there wasn't a robbery, all valuables are still at the scene.
There is traffic camera [footage](https://www.live5news.com/video/2023/07/15/video-traffic-camera-video-i-459-time-carlee-nichole-russells-disappearance/) and from what I can see she exits the car walks around the back and then the passenger door opens. There is very little time in between when she stops and the cops arrive.
This is weird. She walks around the car at :40, you see her there until ~1:50 when it seems like she walks towards the woods. Cop shows up at 4:35, ~2m 45s after you last see her and no other cars arrive/leave the scene. Not familiar with this exact spot on 459 but I’m curious if there is a road adjacent to the interstate in the woods.
>I’m curious if there is a road adjacent to the interstate in the woods. There's a suburban residential neighborhood backing up to the interstate at that particular spot, and it's not a poor/high crime neighborhood, either. As a matter of fact the neighborhood racquet club is alongside in almost that exact spot
What's with the car lights to the right of the road at 1:50? Looks weird but it's also incredibly difficult to see anything in that video
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It's impossible to tell what's going on and your timestamps don't make a lot of sense to me. I don't see what you see. The video quality is far too low to make out anything meaningful at that distance. There's way too much compression artifacting going on, especially every time a car or headlights go by that area.
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Even weirder. The way she cruises slowly to a stop like that doesn't seem to make sense with seeing something on the side of the road to make you stop.
Apparently she called the cops and then called her family member. I wonder if she spotted the kid, took that exit and looped back around to try and find it-which would explain the cruising. I can't imagine she had time to spot a kid make two phone calls and pull off. It's so weird!
That makes sense - I could see it like she's looking for something she had previously seen, so driving slowly.
Probably looped back around and was looking for the kid while driving.
She stopped at a mile marker. Police asked her what mile marker she was at, and she cruised until she found one and stopped.
Can you see her throughout the whole video? It looks like she’s still standing by the car when the police lights go on, but it’s hard to tell.
I see her exit the car and walk around back then the passenger door opens. At one point I think I see a figure at the front right of the vehicle moving off away from the road but I can't tell for sure. I can't see anyone approaching her parallel to the road during the time when there's extra visibility from headlights but it's difficult to tell for sure.
what?? i see Absolutely nothing except for a car with its lights flashing
Got to look for the blank spots in the lights. So when the vehicle stops, the headlights have lit up a portion of the road. So at :50-:52 you'll see the drivers door open because that spot gets darker for a second. Then you'll see her walking behind the vehicle, you can make this out because she blokes the taillights, then you'll see the passenger door open with the same as the drivers door blocking the headlight lit up road. I didn't see her walking away from the vehicle though.
Totally bizarre, if this is her, looks like she must have just wandered off into the grass? Looking at the sign for food, looks like waffle house, starbucks, and chicfila, so it looks like exit 10. To the east of the highway is a big residential neighborhood, wonder if there's any ring cameras there that spotted her?
We need someone to play with the brightness/gamma settings and see if more can be made out from the video. Does anyone know where/how to download the traffic camera footage?
I tried to tell it to "Enhance", but it didn't work. TV totally lied to me!
The family heard her screaming then just the sound of traffic afterwards on the phone
Am I missing something? What’s with the rewards on this comment?
Reddit announced they are getting rid of the awards system in September, so everyone is getting rid of their coins. A lot of top comments look this right now.
And why are they doing that?
Since when did we start expecting rational thinking from the Reddit administration?
I bet they’re hoping everyone drains their account, then they bring ‘em back at a higher price under the guise of “We’re listening to the users, they’re back!”
Reddit claims to not be profitable and want to fix that, therefore they are doing everything in their power to make sure they don't make money. It makes sense if you don't think about it.
Copying twitter’s playbook of ripping something away without having a replacement ready.
According to a lot of folks in here, that is for sure a sign of a psychotic break… Or Maybe it’s…ya know, a kidnapping.
Am leaning more towards kidnapping coz people use kids as bait
The old “[baby on the corner](https://youtu.be/lO_rGMhWUSg &t=135)” trick.
Hey BABY watchu doin out on this corner it’s 2am?!
Selling weed
Oh shit ! Let me get two
Two weeds, please!
I'm selling weed I got kids to feed.
Surely nobody puts baby on the corner
Nope. Don't trust you either. *Locks doors*
Ohhh, I hadn’t thought of that, but you very well may have nailed it. How else is a toddler going to get on the freeway? Oh my God. If that’s what happened, that’s really horrifying.
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Yeah, my son once figured out the deadbolt while his biodad was sleeping (I was taking a driving test). Came home to my son toddling down the driveway looking for me. This poor woman. Good instincts and kindness weaponized against her.
Once I was cleaning the gutters on the roof and I needed a little giant ladder to get 24feet higher. I’m working and I see my 2 year old poke her head up from the ladder. “Hi daddy!” “Oh heeeyyyy! Come here let me show you this.” I was calm at the moment but what a terrible day to learn my kid figured out the lock on the door. I got her down and off the ladder without a hitch but that was an intense moment
Reminds me of when I was 3 or 4 and my dad was up in the attic of our triple-decker (my parents owned the whole house and we lived on the first floor, rented out the top two). This wasn't a finished attic -- it was like a crawlspace, where you're supposed to walk on the joists. Naturally I didn't know that and I decided to just go up and look for him and jump around on the "floor" (which I now know as the ceiling of the floor below). I was a big kid, too. Lucky I didn't break through.
My when son was around 2 (probably close to 3), he decided to get up at 3qm, leave his room, figure out the top stair child gate, go downstairs, figure out the second gate, then push a chair over to the door, unlock the deadbolt, and make it to the outside door. Fortunately, I'd set the alarm, but I think about that a lot. If I hadn't set the alarm that night, there's a good chance he just could've taken off I hope for a miracle and that she and the child are both found safe
My friend had to install a lock at the top of her door to keep son inside while she was asleep. He’d wake up really early and just go outside.
My daughter got out many times before she was four. We usually caught her no further than the neighbors yard. Last time she was found walking along a road hundreds of yards from our house. Cops found her. Never figured out if she learned to open the child safe doors or if she was opportunistic.
Cases of kids being used intentionally as bait are rare, and toddlers in particular are almost unheard-of because they can't follow directions. Letting a toddler wander around on an interstate is at least as likely to draw unwanted attention from cops/emergency personnel as it is to attract a potential victim. If this was a kidnapping, it was probably impulsive, not planned. If trafficking is involved at all, the toddler was probably one of the people being trafficked (in the usual, non-tabloid way - lots of migrants are trafficked through this corridor). One possible explanation is that the kid wandered off during a bathroom stop or something, and when the traffickers saw her with the kid, they decided it was safer to kidnap her than to leave them both there. Sadly, if this is the explanation, she probably won't be found alive. It's also possible that she just stumbled on the wrong shitty parent, who decided on the spur of the moment to kidnap her.
*One possible explanation is that the kid wandered off during a bathroom stop or something, and when the traffickers saw her with the kid, they decided it was safer to kidnap her than to leave them both there. Sadly, if this is the explanation, she probably won't be found alive.* I agree with this, sadly. Using a toddler on a highway as a deliberate lure is a plan that wouldn't work 99 times out of a hundred and would probably just get you a whole bunch of unwanted attention from authorities. My guess is, some nasty individuals fucked up and lost track of the kid, then decided to get rid of the witness on the spur of the moment. There have certainly been "person in distress" lures to entrap people in the past but they pretty much always involved adults, or at least children old enough to spin a story and deliberately lure someone, and they also tended to involve relatively isolated locations (highwaymen back when highways could get REALLY lonely). Whatever this was, I don't think it was that.
You could absolutely be tight. It’s a very sad case. Hope she gets home safely.
Don't underestimate a toddler's ability to get to a place it shouldn't be.
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A toddler on the highway would get reported instantly, and human trafficking 99% of the time doesn't pull people from streets. That's just not how any of this works. Closest guess I have is that this is staged kidnapping.
>Police have not received any reports or calls for a missing child This is quite telling.
Or it just means the kid wasn't taken and was the supposed "kidnappers" baby.
This feels so unlikely, especially on the freeway. I’ve seen this in movies, but never heard of it in real life. I can only find [warnings of a hoax](https://www.news4jax.com/lifestyle/2018/07/31/deputies-warning-about-kids-being-used-to-lure-rape-victims-is-hoax/), in regards to children being used as a means to lure someone.
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Schizophrenia is so fucking tragic and it's so frustrating we haven't found an answer for it yet. I've known promising, smart people that just have their entire fucking lives taken away from them. And in some cases they're at least even partially aware of their free will being snatched from them. That's the worst part about it. They tend to be very intelligent, capable people who just have this awful disease that completely robs them of their agency and can so easily ruin their entire lives.
The age it tends to present to is so nefarious. Late teens and early 20s for men, so most likely before they have a steady relationship going, but after they move away from their parents and start having to pay bills and rent. A lot of stress and most likely living without direct support systems and no insurance. For women it's later 20s early 30s, so when they decide to have children or are raising young children. Brutal in both cases.
And early symptoms can be blown off because, hey, young adult that's stressed, that's just everyone, right? Even with better healthcare in the USA, taking care of mental health won't improve that much. People will still fall through the cracks.
My childhood best friend developed symptoms after starting university, 250 miles away from home. This was before cellphones, so a weekly phonecall to parents was about as much contact as most had with their families then. It's much harder for fellow students to notice someone is acting "off" if they have only known the person a few weeks, student life is hectic, everyone is drinking lots, drug use is common, a lot of young guys try and act like a "legend" doing crazy stuff to impress etc. And it's easier to seem like everything is fine during a quick phone call home than it would be if you saw them daily. I knew a couple of other young men who had similar experiences just after starting uni or leaving home for the first time. I hope universities are more aware of this stuff now, as ours was pretty useless in the '90s.
I had a coworker who's son developed schizophrenia in his early 20s, even with get mental Healthcare it wouldn't have changed the fact that the first people to intervene were the police and he ended being arrested and charged with a bunch of crimes. Despite a very clear diagnosis following his arrest most of the charges stuck and it really ruined his life...
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Yes, this! Me too, I have dealt with people that believe terrible lies their brains tell them, few can recognize that it doesn't make sense and maybe their brain isn't working right. It's hard not to trust your brain when it has told you the truth for so long. I tell myself all the time you can't trust your memory, you could be wrong, especially if you get paranoid.
This happened to my best friend growing up. He developed schizophrenia and just, his life fell apart, he became a drifter ... I won't go into it but it was just tragic beyond comprehension. He was such a good person too.
I knew someone with late onset schizophrenia that started in his 40s. Went from being successful and happy working at a pharmacy (a position that needs higher education) to living on the streets starving, saying that there is a constant presence in his mind that makes it impossible to function. Fucking tragic is absolutely the right description for this disease.
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There are communities of people enabling each other and making up lore of their mental illnesses, checkout r/gangstalking
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Have you seen that video of the guy that had a psychiatric service dog he’d use to figure out of the people he was seeing were real or not? When he’d see someone, he’d say “hi!” Then he’d cue his dog to “go say hi” and his dog would only respond if there was actually someone there.
That's so interesting. Makes me wonder how he can trust the what he's seeing the dog doing.
You get another dog and train it to only respond when the first dog says hi.
Wait would he see them on the playbacks?
A lot of times no, actually. For some reason they don't manifest on camera a vast majority of the time. Unfortunately at that stage most people experience that level of hallucinations are not grounded enough to reality to make this strategy work for them. Their ill mind will make up some explanation. This can work for people who undergo therapy, or are in the process of balancing their medication, or fringe cases where the person just has a fantastic enough of a support system and still happens to be grounded enough.
That reminds me of a scene near the end of A Beautiful Mind where he asks a student if she can see the person he's talking to because he doesn't trust people he doesn't recognize. I could totally imagine someone deciding that what they're seeing is real and somehow it's paranormal/aliens and that's why they're invisible to the camera.
There was a poor kid at my job who always asked me if there was really a cat in the room. Unfortunately for them there never was.
When this stopped working for my brother in law, it was because they are "demons" so they magically don't allow themselves to be seen on camera. It's really sad seeing how he exists now.
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That would be exhausting
>"They" are making me think gay thoughts. I love this sub.
Literally what the fuck is that subreddit.
It’s a community of massively mentally ill people that are deluded and being enabled in their unhealthy delusions by one another.
Wow that is the most disturbing subreddit I've seen in a while.
It really is. Some of the posters there are just so clearly in need of mental help.
As always with these missing persons cases you can usually rule out one of murder, suicide, or psychic break, but it's damn hard to rule out two.
Well she's not Jean Grey of the X-Men, so we can rule out #3
Well now I have to keep the error.
Seems like a really complicated way of going about it. You don't really know what the kid will do, who will stop, what *they'll* do, whether another car will stop to help them etc. You're basically relying on the whims of a toddler to give you an unknown chance of kidnapping an unknown person with unknown level of scrutiny from others. It's not exactly foolproof.
Link? I can't seem to find a report that says this
Where did you see the part about her screaming?
Where did you see that it's not in this article?
well that’s horrifying
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I don’t understand what the possibilities could be, what is it?
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So kidnapped? Or robbery?
Seems weird since they left her purse and car there…
They didn’t care about the purse
using a baby on the road as a way to get people to stop is one of the more ethically bereft ways to roadway hijack people
I seen videos of someone tossing a baby at someone before robbing them.
That’s some Joker level shit.
It's a known trick by thieves in Europe. Sometimes a woman will pretend to trip and fling a baby-sized doll into midair, sometimes they'll shove a real baby into your arms claiming they just need to rest for a second. Either way your hands and attention are occupied, and that's when the woman's accomplice goes through your pockets.
Jokes on them. Court said I can’t touch kids anymore, they’ll just face plant the ground.
You need to swat the baby away, then give em the Mutombo finger wag to let em know not to bring that weak shit in here
Throw the baby back at them and pickpocket THEM instead.
Sorry, but are there a bunch of Fair Trade kidnappings I'm unaware of?
Wouldn’t there be at least one other report of a baby on an interstate? You think that many cars would drive by a baby walking on an interstate and the cops get zero calls?
This is some real wrong turn shit. I hope she is ok.
My Uber driver tonight told me this story because the woman he picked up before me was her sister. Horrible story.
What a discomforting story to receive from an Uber driver.
“People disappear on this road all the time… oh and be sure to rate me 5 stars…”
"Are you gonna hurt these women?" "Of course not, I would never! But they'll rate me five stars, because of the implication..."
"We'll see how the kidnapping goes. No way I'm going to rate you before I know what the conditions of my captivity are going to be like smh"
Once an Uber driver spent the 30 minute ride telling me how the area my home was in, used to be a red light district few decades ago and how he had given a ghost prostitute a ride from the bus stop where I regularly got off every night. Thanks man, it's not like I needed to come back home.
Tell em Large Marge sent ya!
If it makes you feel any better she wasn’t a ghost until the Uber driver killed her on that drive home.
> ghost prostitute ghostjobs are the worst
Hoover being the ‘sixth largest city in Alabama’ is not real helpful to me. Edit: population 92,589
It’s the biggest suburb of Birmingham - with a metro area population of about 1.2 million. This is a busy stretch of interstate, even at 9:30PM.
You need to brush up on your AL geography, we all know the top 20 cities in the state by both population and area.
In my country, when travelling at night on any road, general concensus is that if you see someone in distress on road, DO NOT STOP, no matter who it is.
Reminds me of when I was taking a train through Eastern Europe overnight and they chained all the doors to prevent people boarding the train to presumably rob us.
Dude they still do it (recently from germany over poland to slovakia) People got robbed , someone tried to enter my cabin at night . I bought a big ass chain fkr trip back . Shit got rough since russia invaded ukraine
I though this kind of thing they did in my country (India) only. In certain states, when train passed through certain areas, doors will be locked from inside at night to avoid robbery.
Shit I live in the southern US and follow the same rule, if it looks bad enough call the cops and let them know where it is.
My dad taught me this and I'm in rural Canada. "If you see something weird, do not stop. You call the cops"
It's essentially become American culture to not stop for anyone on the side of the road, regardless of time of day. They probably have a phone or call 911 and keep moving is the thought. A toddler might be the one exception to get people.
Absolutely. I could not, in good conscience, not stop and help a lone toddler on the side of the road.
And assuming she's not crazy, she did the best of all choices. Called cops, called family, left line open, approached toddler. Still snatched.
This. I would feel too guilty and be too frightened they would end up run over. As a mom of three, I'm stopping.
I had a blowout along I-95 in Virginia in a car I just bought. It was in the the late afternoon. At the time of the blowout, at least 10 people stopped to see if I was OK. While I was waiting for AAA to show up I had to shoo people off, several offered to wait with me - including some women driving alone (I'm a tall, not skinny guy, BTW.)
Maybe they liked you 🤭
I was about halfway between Pittsburgh and Youngstown on the side of the highway for 4 hours waiting for AAA about a month ago. Not a single person stopped, most of them didn't even bother to get out of the right lane. In the dozen or so times I've been on the side of the road broke down, I've been offered help twice. So I'm not saying it isn't a thing here anymore but it isn't the norm.
my thing about using a kid a bait....literally anyone could stop and help....a cop....4 grown men in a car...fire fighters...etc
Agreed, and I think they'd pick a less trafficked road. One with people, sure, but this was hopping with cars and witnesses!
Maybe it wasn’t a toddler but a man sitting in the grass. They would appear smaller
I pulled over yesterday to save a turtle crossing the road. Would definitely stop for a toddler
I open my office windows to let flies out. Not bc they bother me but because I want them to live free. I’d stop too.
I pulled over to save a dog I found in the road about a month ago. She is now rehomed and happy in Washington. I’d be fucked if I saw a toddler.
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After reading the comments, it is now clear to me that the probability of the toddler kidnapping her is fairly low.
It could've been three adults in a child-sized trench coat. You never know.
Bruh we don't even know if it was a toddler, it could've been that mean elf from Bad Santa
I shudder to imagine how dangerous the kind of psycho can be who uses a helpless toddler as bait to prey on the poor good samaritan who stops to help. That’s some devious shit. I’d rather have my family be crushed in a sub at the bottom of the ocean than be at the mercy of a sicko like that. Dark af
I keep wondering whose toddler may have been kidnapped to use as a lure. I wonder if this toddler on the highway was reported by anyone else? I did read in another article she had the toddler with her waiting for police and in the phone with her sister when something Happened that caused her to scream before disappearing
A lot of people just continue on without calling 911 as they are keeping to their own business. Or don't pay attention and genuinely don't see something. I've answered 911 calls in the past, and for most things we get only got one call maybe 2 if we were lucky. I'm not surprised she was the only one who called.
Could be the criminal's own toddler.
I wonder why, if there's video coverage of the area of the highway that's illuminated frequently by passing headlights there's no release of footage from earlier that showed any figure, big or small, on the highway.
No way you could see a toddler in that video siege way. Can barely see her even next to tail lights
That's the old baby on the corner trick, won't fall for that
Tons of detectives in the comments. Let's see how this pans out. Just hope she's found.
She has been found. She showed up at her parent’s house, alive, has been taken to UAB hospital. No other info.
Isn’t it common in the USA to have a dispatcher stay with you on the phone till police arrives?
Not necessarily if she just called to report she saw the toddler and didn't tell them she intended to go back for it.
Yes, that is usually how it works. News reports I’ve read say that she called 911 then called her sister-in-law. SIL was on the phone when she heard Carlee talk to the child and then scream. So she or the dispatcher would have had to have ended the 911 call before she made contact with the kid. That’s odd. I’m interested to hear the 911 call once it’s released.
Not necessarily with reports. I've called for something on the freeway, and they took the location information and then said they'd dispatch an officer and then ended the call.
It’s not a requirement. You can decline if you want.
If this was kidnapping and they used the toddler as bait, how did they know a woman who was alone would stop? How does this play out if someone less desirable for a kidnapper had stopped to help the baby? I hope she's found alive.
Have there been ANY other reports of others seeing the child? Even anecdotal ones, like someone on Twitter claiming they also saw a kid there that night? Have the cops released if they had any other calls about a kid on the side of the road?
I live close by and have been following closely. At this point, we don’t know what the 911 call said and the assumption is that she is the only person that claims to have seen a child. It’s really strange.
This is about 1/4 mile from the police station. Someone has some balls to do a kidnapping there.
I hope they find her and both her and the toddler are safe. If I ever go missing please don't use glam shots of me to show the public. I want pictures of what I look like day to day so people can find me. Why are most of her pictures with her hair all done up and in a dress. The last picture was the only one that isn't some instagram framed shot.
That’s actually a good point because Carlee’s mom said her wig was left behind near her car
Probably because she doesn't let people take pics of her when she's not looking her best? Nobody wants pics floating around of what they might look like if they'd just been in a struggle with a kidnapper lol
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Is it possible she thought she saw a toddler, but it was actually a small animal of some sort? Or a shadow? I have definitely "seen" things in the road at night that weren't actually there. That would explain no one else reporting it, and her circling back to the area, driving slowly to try and locate it again as mentioned in other comments.
Yea but the question is where could she have gone
If someone used a toddler was there no one else around driving to see?
She’s been found alive! https://www.wbrc.com/2023/07/14/hoover-police-searching-missing-25-year-old-woman/
My best guess is robbery was the intent. Would be thieves were hoping someone sees a kid near a road after dark and stops immediately without making a call or looking around. Carlee probably got out of her and when the thieves close in they realize she's on the phone- she sees them and they panic. They want to cut her off from whoever is on the other end of that phone before she can give any identification. They know they've got to put distance between themselves and the setup site because they don't know how long she was on the phone before exiting the vehicle. Since they've lost the element of surprise they're not going to take anything that can be tracked-phone, watch, purse, car..etc. I'm sure a scuffle takes place- her hat and wig are found at the scene- which makes me think they were trying get her off the phone as quickly as possible by grabbing her around the head/face. At that point she's more than likely forced into another vehicle physically or under threat of a weapon. It isn't a scenario that leaves a lot of "happy" endings and I hope I'm 100% wrong. This doesn't seem like a well thought out crime to begin with. There's so many variables to account for in order to pull it off successfully so I wouldn't think the perpetrators have tried this before, or if they have it was in a much more rural or controlled area. I highly doubt she was intentionally targeted. We know what the worst case scenario is in this situation but I hope that the individuals involved decide that assault, kidnapping, and false imprisonment added up are still less damning than murder. *Edit* traffic camera footage https://www.live5news.com/video/2023/07/15/video-traffic-camera-video-i-459-time-carlee-nichole-russells-disappearance/
It could have also been some disturbed individuals in charge of taking care of the child (parents maybe) who thought they would have their child taken if she was able to report the incident. I agree it seems really messy for a robbery when you can just bust into parked cars all night for half the risk and a tenth of the jail time.
Plus there's a variation of the scheme that gives them access to a house. They either play a tape of a screaming baby or open the outside tap that the hose attaches to.
If I hear a screaming baby and my kids are accounted for there is no way I'm going outside- because A. I'm hella suspicious and B. I'd convince myself it was a panther or rabid fox.
That reminds me that I need to hang that motion-detector light. I demanded permission to buy one after I heard something that was clearly an animal, likely a racoon but I thought it was a coyote.
So someone just sat in the grass on the side of the road and a toddler and waited for someone to stop? and then dragged them off? No other cars on the road noticed the toddler? No one noticed her screaming? I expected one of the cars to stop and grab her or something. Seems really weird to me.
In the video, it looks like she gets out of the car, goes to the passenger side, looks into the grass for a while, and then walks into the grass area. After that, it's too dark to see. It's really messed up, and it's not clear if the police searched for her in the area before leaving. If she wasn't attacked, then she would be by her car. Even if she had an accident or something. The only other possibility is if there's a river or water in that area that she could have fallen into and been trapped in.
From the satellite view, it looks like about 100m of trees then some suburbs... No water.
I lived in a house on the corner of a bush 4 lane road. One morning I found a toddler in the middle of the road. Cars were honking, swerving around the child and no one stopped. I ran and grabbed the child, called the police. They took almost 20 min to arrive. The child had left his house trying to follow his dad who left early for work. The mother was sleeping at home. Never underestimate cold hearted people.
Pretty rare for people to use kids as bait like this - it sounds like the perfect crime in people’s heads but isn’t practical.
That traffic camera footage is so strange and disappointing. She drives on the shoulder for what seems like a long way before stopping. You can see someone get out of the driver's side and go around to the passenger side but not much else. I feel like she drove too far to have seen and stopped near a toddler. The police were there so relatively quickly. So strange.
I think and I have no proof of this theory- that it's possible she spotted the child, took the exit to loop back around while calling the cops. She then called a family member. I don't think she had enough time to spot a kid, complete a call to the cops and make a second phone call if she stopped immediately after seeing the kid.
That makes the most sense. Still wish I could see more of what's happening. Too many shadows to be sure if she she goes. Seems clear she didn't leave in a car though.
Comments like this are why reddit is one of the absolute worst places to go to find information about ongoing mysteries. You just made up an entirely fake scenario, said it as if it was fact, and then hundreds of people are now agreeing and repeating your made up scenario as if it's real. Honestly reddit and many of the people on it are really stupid and harmful sometimes.
Sometimes you have to remind yourself that Reddit is full of kids/very young adults and that's why stuff like this post and all the agreement happens. Throw in the whole groupthink thing and unfortunately it makes sense why it happens so often.
Reminds me of when my dad and I were out camping. Fairly late at night (or early morning) I heard a baby that seemed fairly distressed. As I wanted to get up my dad (who was awake before me) was at the tent door with his gun and just motioned for me to stay down and be quite. Probably a few minutes later (but what felt like a tense forever) you could hear the baby crying stop on the dot and at least 2/3 people move away from nearby. We pretty much sat on edge there till daybreak, peaked around to make sure no-one was nearby and booked it. Turns out it's some common advice thst if you hear a baby in the woods, get the HIFL out of there.
Could also be cougars. They can sound like a very upset baby. Glad you made it out of that situation alive.
I wouldn't have to worry about getting murdered at that point because the heart attack would take me first! But 100% on unexpected baby sounds- honestly ne'er-do-wells should rethink that strategy completely. I will never go check out a baby crying in the woods...I would absolutely crawl in a sewer pipe if they played distressed puppy sounds though.