Girl, 4, rescued 48 hours after being abducted

A 4-year-old girl has been successfully rescued less than 48 hours after being abducted by her neighbor.

The girl, nicknamed Huanhuan, was lured into a car by the man under the pretense of buying things for her, as she was playing outside her home in Wuhua county of Meizhou city, Guangdong province.

Police said Huanhuan lives with her grandparents and her parents are away from home. On the day of her disappearance, her grandmother searched for her for an hour and then realized the seriousness of the matter and called her parents who then reported the case to the police.

After the initial search and rescue, it was determined that Huanhuan had potentially been abducted by human traffickers.

Wuhua county police immediately set up a special investigation team and deployed local police officers to identify suspicious vehicles or personnel, checking video surveillance cameras to monitor any suspicious activities.

Soon, an official from a nearby village reported a suspicious car wandering around the village for nearly two hours at noon on Dec 30. Police were also able to confirm that the car was using a fake license number.

Following this clue, investigators found their main suspect, a man surnamed Wen, who is not only a resident of Huanhuan's village but is her neighbor from across the street.

On Dec 31 at around 10:00 pm, the police arrested the suspect at a town in Meixian district of Meizhou city, who admitted selling Huanhuan to a man from Jiangsu province, surnamed Yan, for 60,000 yuan ($8,718). After Wen abducted Huanhuan at around 2:00 pm on Dec 30, he went to a highway service area in Anhui province for the exchange.

The next day, the investigation team followed Yan's trail. After searching through four provinces and traveling over 2,500 kilometers, the suspect was finally arrested in Zhenjiang city, Jiangsu province at 11:00 am on Jan 1 with help from the local police.

Huanhuan, who was being hidden inside a closet during the police's arrest of the suspect, was successfully rescued and reunited with her family.

According to Huanhuan's father, her daughter's mental state is stable despite having a vague recollection of being abducted. She was not abused during her abduction.

The suspect Wen, 27 years old, is unemployed and has been jailed twice in the past for robbery and various other crimes. On the day of Huanhuan's abduction, he wore a face covering and avoided surveillance cameras due to his familiarity with the layout of his home village.

Huanhuan's father later recounted that a boy in the neighborhood did witness Huanhuan being grabbed by a man wearing a face covering, but due to the boy's young age and limited vocabulary no one was able to verify his claim until the police's involvement.

An official from Huanhuan's village said that a number of cameras had been installed in the village in the past, but they did not give full coverage and had blind spots. After the incident, the village plans to further improve the surveillance camera system and try to ensure that every village intersection has coverage.