A six-year-old girl reported missing to Durham police has been safely located in Mississauga, CityNews confirmed. Police are investigating how she arrived in the city after her father left her with a male associate.
The girl was found on Tuesday, following a missing-person report made by her grandfather on Monday evening. She was being assessed by medical personnel to check that she was healthy and had not been injured.
Durham Regional Police Service Acting Sgt. Nick Gluckstein told reporters at a Tuesday news conference that the girl had spent the weekend with her father. He said her father then left her in the care of a man he knew.
The girl had been seen with that man in Peel Region on Sunday, near the location where she was eventually found in Mississauga.
Gluckstein said police received a large number of tips from the public after their news conference and were able to find the girl quickly.
Police were not treating the investigation as criminal at that point. They planned to interview both the father and his associate to determine whether any criminal conduct had occurred and whether charges would be pursued.
How the girl came to be in Mississauga remained part of the investigation.
Asked why police had not issued an Amber Alert, Gluckstein said the information available to investigators did not meet the criteria for one. Police understood that the girl was missing but had not been taken by force.
He said an alert would have been issued if the circumstances had met that threshold at any point.
