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Police: Fayetteville 4-year-old was given to pimp in Texas

A 4-year-old girl from Fayetteville who had been missing for more than two months was found safe in Texas on Friday, police said.

Posted Updated

By
Gilbert Baez & Nia Harden
, WRAL reporters
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — A 4-year-old girl from Fayetteville who had been missing for more than two months was found safe in Texas on Friday, police said.

Aubriana Recinos has been missing since late May, when her mother, Carmen Lowe, didn't return the girl to her father's custody after a visit. Police treated it as a custody dispute, however, and didn't get involved in the girl's disappearance until July 8.

Mario Recinos, Aubriana's father, traveled to Texas on Friday to be reunited with her and was returning to Fayetteville with her Friday night.

"Holding [my] baby girl, it's like a whole new feeling again," Recinos told WRAL News by phone. "It's kind of like something that you've long lost and thought you were never going to get back."

Carmen Love and Aubriana Recinos (Fayetteville Police photos)

Lowe, 23, was arrested in New Orleans on Thursday as part of an FBI investigation of a human trafficking operation. She was charged with prostitution, theft and violating a custody order issued in Cumberland County, records show.

Police said they tracked her cellphone and credit card purchases to locate her and, in turn, her daughter.

Aubriana was found in a home in Lewisville, Texas – about 1,200 miles away from Fayetteville – with members of a human trafficking operation.

"The child was pretty much given to a pimp – an associate of the pimp or family of the pimp – for keeping," Fayetteville police Maj. Robert Ramirez said. "It is a ring, a human trafficking ring, the FBI was investigating. These individuals had other children as well."

Ramirez noted that, had Aubriana not been found as quickly as she was, she might have wound up a victim of human trafficking.

North Carolina consistently ranks among the top 10 states for human trafficking, with 221 cases in 2017, according to the National Human Trafficking Hotline.

Recinos said Lowe sold Aubriana to the pimp to settle a drug debt. Police haven't confirmed that.

If so, the case is strikingly similar to the death of 5-year-old Shaniya Davis a decade ago. The Fayetteville girl was handed over by her mother to Mario Andrette McNeill to settle a debt, and her body was found a week later in a field. She had been sexually assaulted and asphyxiated.

McNeill is now on death row at Central Prison, while Shaniya's mother, Antoinette Nicole Davis, is serving a 17- to 21-year prison sentence.

Recinos said the similarity in the cases is even eerier: Lowe and Shaniya were cousins.

"This could have turned into a whole different scenario," he said, adding that Aubriana wasn't harmed during the ordeal. "I don't even want to think about the negative. I'm just glad that she's here alive."

Authorities said the case didn’t meet the criteria for a North Carolina Amber Alert, although Fayetteville police said during the search they believed Aubriana was in danger.

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