Rocky Mount police said they fear that a 12-year-old girl at the focus of an Amber Alert may have been lured away from her home by a convicted sex offender.
Police issued an Amber Alert for the 12-year-old Friday afternoon, and police believe she may be with 27-year-old
Phillip Denkler
, a registered sex offender who served time in prison for taking indecent liberties with a child.
Investigators said the two may be traveling in a 2005 beige Hyundai Sonata and may be displaying one of two license plates numbers:
PSA-2000
or
NWN-2630
.
On Friday night, investigators said they had determined that the suspect and the girl knew each other.
Police said the two had been talking on the phone with each other for months, and that there were no signs of struggle in her bedroom.
It also appeared that the girl left behind a note in her room. In the note, the girl wrote she needed some time alone.
"She left us a note saying she needed some time to herself and not to be mad and that she loves us," Dorothy Collie, the child's grandmother, said. "I don't know what he'll do to her...I don't know what he'll do to her...I just beg him don't hurt her, just bring her home where she belongs."
Kim Baker, the girl's mother, said she knew of Denkler, but neither she nor anyone in the family knew he was a
registered sex offender
or that he had any contact with Jodie.
"We were kind of both confused to as to how she met this guy and got so trusting of him," Baker said.
Police described the suspected abductor, Phillip Daniel Denkler, as a white male with straight, short black hair and brown eyes.
If you have any information about the whereabouts of either Phillip Denkler or the girl, please call
911
.
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