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Police say mom on run hid kids in pit under playground : State News : TCPalm

Police say mom on run hid kids in pit under playground

Joel Marino and Sofia Santana Sun-Sentinel
Originally published 02:37 p.m., December 12, 2008

FORT LAUDERDALE — Police this afternoon continue to search for a mother and the young daughter she allegedly abducted from a foster home in Pennsylvania and said they think the two are still in Broward.

Authorities are looking for Tammy Kong-Kham, 35, and her daughter, Kimberly, 8, who was abducted in Oct. Police say Kongkham also took an older daughter, 10-year-old Kelley, from the foster home, but that child has been found safe in Fort Lauderdale.

Police have received numerous tips from people who think they have seen Kong-Kham and her youngest daughter in the area recently, said Missing Persons Detective Kathy Collins.

Federal kidnapping charges are pending against Kong-Kham, said Collins, who also warned that if anyone has been helping Kong-Kham avoid authorities, those people could face charges of harboring a fugitive.

For two weeks, the mother and young girls lived on coconuts, water and food scavenged from trash bins, hiding in a pit dug in the sand beneath a Fort Lauderdale beach playground, according to police.

They could hear other children running and laughing above them, but the two girls kept still — officials say their mother demanded they stay in the damp, ant-infested hole for days at a time.

Kelley Kong-Kham told investigators on Tuesday that's where she'd been living with her mother and younger sister, according to police.

"This woman brought her children to Florida, where she left them in deplorable conditions, in places where one wouldn't even leave an animal," Collins said. "Our focus right now is Kimberly and having her return safely."

Police gradually pieced together the bizarre saga of Kong-Kham and her girls after Detective Amy Hoover, a Fort Lauderdale police officer, found Kelley begging for food at the Galleria mall in Fort Lauderdale on Dec. 4.

"She looked fairly clean, but her arm was covered in bug bites and her clothes didn't match," Hoover said.

The girl claimed she was 18 and that her name was Rose. When she said she was waiting for a boyfriend whose last name she couldn't remember, Hoover knew something was up.

"She kept changing her story, and then went from being really sweet to getting nasty with me," Hoover said.

Officers took the child to Fort Lauderdale Hospital on Las Olas Boulevard and confined her under the state's Baker Act. That law allows mental health professionals and authorities to detain a person deemed mentally unstable and a danger to themselves or others at a mental health facility for up to 72 hours.

On Tuesday, the girl told Collins about her missing mother and sister for the first time. She even led them to the playground she'd recently called home.

Coconut husks, clothing and some books littered the pit, Collins said.

"She told us everything, and even then, we didn't know what to believe," she said.

In 2003, authorities said, Kong-Kham divorced her husband and took custody of their daughters. In October, according to Fort Lauderdale police, Pennsylvania's Department of Public Welfare took the girls from their mother and placed them in a temporary foster home.

Two days after the girls began attending a new school, Kong-Kham approached them wearing a blonde wig and whisked them away, Collins said. She was last seen boarding a Greyhound bus at a Philadelphia bus station. Philadelphia police said Thursday that missing person reports had been filed for the girls, and an arrest warrant for kidnapping issued for their mother.

Officials don't know why Kong-Kham brought the girls to South Florida; local police say the woman has no known family, friends or connections here.

Once here, Kong-Kham led her girls to the small oceanside playground near the intersection of State Road A1A and Sebastian Street, according to police.

For shelter, they dug a large hole beneath the plastic playset and hunkered down there unnoticed, even as children and passersby walked around the area, Collins said.

Kelley told police that's where the family ate, slept and went to the bathroom.

"Eventually, the mom realized she couldn't take care of both children," Collins said.

Officials say Kong-Kham abandoned Kelley in the hole, telling her to fend for herself, then fled with Kimberly.

The 10-year-old wandered the beach for at least a week before ending up at the upscale mall two miles away, Collins said.

A representative from the Pennsylvana Department of Public Welfare plans to take Kelley home today, according to Philadelphia police.

"We're going to work to make sure that the girls are healthy," Stacey Witalec, a department spokeswoman, said by telephone.

Authorities ask anyone with information about Kong-Kham's whereabouts to call Detective Kathy Collins at 954-828-5548 or Crime Stoppers at 954-493-TIPS (8477).

I really hope this mother will come to her senses and do what's right. This is not the way she should be trying to get her kids back.