With the help of a Netflix documentary and a retentive memory, a store employee has helped to recover a missing girl, Kayla Unbehaun, who was kidnapped by her non-custodial mother six years ago, when she was nine years old.
Kayla Unbehaun has now been reunited with her dad after an employee who was said to be a minor, working at a shopping center in Asheville, North Carolina recognized Kayla’s face from a show on Netflix.
The store manager then called the police.
Kayla’s father, Ryan Iserka, who was granted full custody of her, said that her mother, Heather, kidnapped her after a visit in 2017. The matter was also reported by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
On July 5, Ryan Iserka went to pick up his daughter from her mother who was only granted supervised, visits when he discovered the two never returned from a camping trip, and a felony warrant for kidnapping was issued for Unbehaun on July 28, 2017.
Last year, Netflix released a new season of “Unsolved Mysteries” with an episode centered on parental abductions.
However, Kayla’s story was not the main focus of the episode. Her picture which has been digitally-progressed to present would she would look like now, was only part of a brief roll call of missing people at the end of the episode.
“The media is so important when it comes to the recovery of missing children,” Callahan Walsh of the National Center For Missing and Exploited Children said. “Even in these long term cases, the more we tell the story of these missing children and put their images out to the public, the more likely that they’re going to be recovered.”
The police arrested her mother, Heather Unbehaun, 40, in Asheville over the weekend. Authorities said she posted $250,000 bail and is next due to appear in court on July 11 in North Carolina.
Iserka is overjoyed that his daughter is back. In a statement, he said:
“I also want to thank all of the followers on the‘Bring Kayla Home’ Facebook page, who helped keep her story alive and were instrumental in spreading awareness. “We ask for privacy as we get to know each other again and navigate this new beginning.”
