Cellphone tracking leads police to missing Indiana girl in Wisconsin, court docs say
WELLS COUNTY, Ind. (WPTA) - Court documents released in the kidnapping of an 11-year-old Wells County girl show police were able to track down her location in Wisconsin using cellphone data from her kidnapper.
Probable cause documents say the Wells County Sheriff’s Department was contacted by a woman on Saturday, Dec. 30, about a child abduction after her 11-year-old daughter went missing. Police say they began to search the area near their home, finding the child’s phone nearby.
The mother allegedly told police her daughter had recently been caught sending sexual messages to two people in the last few weeks. She told officers she knew one was an adult, but could not remember his name.
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Police say they filed the girl as a missing person and contacted multiple police agencies to help with the search. Throughout the investigation, court documents say police learned a white van with out-of-state plates was spotted in the trailer park around the time the girl went missing.
Witnesses told police two men were seen in the van, documents say, and were also spotted walking in the area with a dog. One witness told police they saw the van in the same area where the girl’s phone was found.
Using forensic analysis, police say they learned a phone number belonging to Zackary Delozier of Edgemont, South Dakota, had called the girl’s phone 28 times within the hour she went missing.
ISP officers then began to track Delozier’s phones and learned a white van with South Dakota plates was spotted on a camera headed across Indiana towards Chicago.
Then around 12:11 a.m. on Sunday, Delozier was shown headed through Wisconsin. ISP then contacted Wisconsin police, who were able to locate and stop Delozier’s van in the southern part of the state, in Iowa County.
Inside the van, police found the girl along with 27-year-old Delozier, 23-year-old Sara Gaudino of Rapid City, South Dakota, and 24-year-old Isaiah Schryvers of Rapid City, South Dakota. Investigators say they also recovered a gun.
Police say they then called the girl’s mother, who said she did not know who the three adults were and believed they took the girl for crimes against her will. The woman said she believed one or more of the suspects had been messaging her daughter.
Court documents say the girl told police she remembered being at home with her parents around 3 p.m. on Saturday when she woke up in a vehicle with the three suspects, not knowing who they were or how she got there.
Delozier is currently charged with kidnapping and has an extradition hearing set for Friday afternoon in Wisconsin. Both Guadino and Schryvers are also charged with kidnapping and are in the process of being extradited to Wells County.
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