Teen Tells Police She Was Taken By Two Men

Sonya Balsley

(Lawrenceburg, Ind.) - A 16-year-old mentally handicapped girl has told detectives she was abducted from her Bright home prior to a full-on search Monday.

Eagle 99.3 broke the story of Sonya Balsley's disappearance just after midnight Tuesday morning.

The Dearborn County Prosecutor’s Office says Balsley has been released from the Dearborn County Hospital and has returned home with her parents, Erik and Penny Balsley.

Once treated for exposure by doctors at the hospital, Balsley was interviewed by Dearborn County Special Crimes Unit detectives.

“(She) stated that she was taken from the back yard of the house where she resided with her parents, by two men against her will,” Dearborn-Ohio County Prosecutor Aaron Negangard said in a news release Wednesday.

Investigators are currently unable to release a description of the alleged abductors.

The investigation into Balsley’s possible abduction is continuing. The Dearborn County Sheriff’s Department will be increasing patrols in the Bright area, the prosecutor’s office said.

Two volunteer firefighters who were part of the search team located Sonya alive in a creek bed off Sneakville Road at about 2:00 Tuesday afternoon. That’s about a mile away from the yard of her home on Vineyard Court in Bright where she was last seen 20 hours earlier Monday evening, Labor Day.

Balsley’s parents have taken in several at-risk children. Penny Balsley told WXIX-TV she believes her daughter was taken, possibly by a former resident of their home.

"They had been writing since it's been raining in the condensation at night," Penny Balsley told the television station. "Like they wrote a couple of nights ago ‘gonna kill you', or ‘kill you' and you can still see that up there. But then they wrote ‘woods' and that was not there."

Sonya had been the subject of death threats in recent weeks, and special crimes unit investigators say they have been called to the home before.

Anybody with information relating to the case is urged to call the Dearborn County Special Crimes Unit at (812) 537-3049 or the Dearborn County Sheriff’s Department at (812) 537-3636.

Meanwhile, the community is being credited for their assistance in the search for Sonya.

“A big thank you to all the participants from our Bright Fire Department and EMS teams, Greendale Fire and EMS, The Miller-York Fire Department and the Aurora and Hogan Fire Departments who eventually had the good luck of finding Sonya this afternoon,” the Bright Fire Department said in a statement Tuesday. “Thank you to the citizens that helped with the search as well. When people are in need, this community comes together.”

LINKS:

Missing Bright Teen Found, Hospitalized