Photo: 📷: Saugerties Police Dept.
A little girl who was missing for 2 years was found in a secret compartment under some stairs when police searched a house in Saugerties, NY. Police had often suspected her non-custodial parents of kidnapping then 4 yr old Paislee Shulti from her Ithaca, NY home where she lived. They had searched their home several times since she went missing. But they never found anything.
Until now. Police received a tip that she was inside their house. So cops went to investigate again. This time, one of the policemen noticed something odd about the basement steps. He pulled at them and opened a secret compartment containing Paislee Shulti and her biological mother.
“He took a flashlight and looked between the cracks between the steps. He saw what he thought was a blanket, and at that point they used a halogen tool, a forcible entry tool, and they started ripping the steps off the staircase itself. At one point they saw little feet, as he put it,” Police chief Joseph Sinagra said.
Paislee, now 6 yrs old, was brought to the hospital to make sure she was ok, then released Paislee to her legal guardians and her sister.
Kimberly Cooper and Kirk Shultis, Plus Kirk's father all face charges including child endangerment.