Found Alive AL - Carlethia “Carlee” Russell, 25, 911 call reported toddler walking on side of interstate, car found, she & toddler gone, Birmingham, 13 Jul ‘23 #2

[MistyWaters]

I don't think we can do this because we don't have the super-precise timings of calls... but to overlay the data from her phone (calling 911 and the family friend) with what we see on the traffic cam.

That would be telling.

This might’ve already been already discussed but according to yesterdays release from LE, it appears both calls were made within 3 minutes. So if the vehicle first stopped when the 911 call was made, remained in that same location for 3 minutes, both calls were made before it moved on. It doesn‘t seem logical for Carlee to be asking the child if he’s okay, then a scream is heard coming from one location. Then personal articles to have been found by the abandoned but still running car, as if to suggest a kidnapping had just occurred in that second spot. JMO

ETA: What will prove interesting is if cellphone analytics determine that additional amount of travel following the two calls.

Unanswered questions linger in Carlee Russell's mysterious disappearance and return

There are still a lot of unanswered questions regarding the disappearance of 25-year-old Carlee Russell, who returned home to her parent's house in Hoover Satur

abc3340.com

• Russell communicated on her cell phone with individuals known to her while on her path of travel up to the point of calling 911 at 9:34 PM. The conversation with the 911 operator ended and Carlee called a relative.
• She went missing during that conversation sometime after 9:36 PM after telling both the 911 operator and the relative she had seen a male toddler in a diaper on the side of I-459 and was stopping to check on him.

 

[Ontario Mom]

yes. I am not in a position to go look but it was reported that the phone was found some distance from the car in the grass. It has been discussed here. I also would use caution in connection too many unclear dots in assuming that the words "outside the car" means RIGHT outside the car. I think we all jumped to that conclusion in the beginning and understandably so. But at this point, I think that may not be as clear.

I haven't seen that article, so maybe someone can find it.

It's kind of impossible to connect dots when so much info is missing but it's much easier to discard information that is highly improbable.

Toddler bait on the highway & random side of the highway kidnapper not even knowing who'd stop for a kid, who then lucks out that it's a single woman... both of those are highly improbable.

So if we remove them both as possibly never happening, it all just comes back down to Carlee and how she actually disappeared from the scene before the first responding officer arrived.

 

[StarryStarryNight]

I watched the GH video. Not all of it! (If he would just work his magic offline, and edit it into a comprehensible video)
Never could find exactly where she pulls off for three minutes in all the fluff, but I believe everybody who says it’s there.
Thinking about it though, I don’t think it really changes anything.
I will say again, to me, the lack of urgency is the key.

 

[StarRemy8]

I question the phone call to her parents/family members. If I had been abducted and was missing for days I would call 911 the minute I had a chance before calling my family from a number they would not be familiar with. If the parents immediately called LE and they responded by going to the RRI she would have had to have just left right after she made that call so what would the point of the call been for?

 

[kccorona]

Something that I've wondered since the beginning is, regarding the 911 call the night of the event (Thurs 7/13)- Is it odd that the Carlee did not stay on the line with 911 dispatch until LE arrived? I know often when we read transcripts from 911 calls where the caller is potentially at risk (i.e. not calling to report a crime that has already occurred but rather a crime in progress), dispatch asks for the caller to stay on the line until LE/FD/EMS arrives. Is that only asked by dispatchers when the caller reports they are personally in imminent danger, or is there a possibility that Carlee may have hung up with dispatch before they asked, because she (Carlee) wanted to make her next call?

Another question- was she trying to reach her brother, and his girlfriend answered instead? This may have been answered by family early on but I can't seem to find it now. If so, was her brother someone she called frequently, or especially when she felt fearful or wanted to be on the phone with someone?

Not even really sure what any of the answers could mean to these questions, or if there's any relevance, but it is something that's stuck out to me/nagged me while reading and re-reading the details of the situation.

 

[JerseyWasHome2]

I watched the GH video. Not all of it! (If he would just work his magic offline, and edit it into a comprehensible video)
Never could find exactly where she pulls off for three minutes in all the fluff, but I believe everybody who says it’s there.
Thinking about it though, I don’t think it really changes anything.
I will say again, to me, the lack of urgency is the key.

If you have the courage and time, her flashing hazard lights appear on the very lower right of the screen at the 9:31:35 timestamp which is in the upper right corner of the video, which is also at the timestamp of 31:35 into GH's video. A few min later, the same car drives up ahead to the location it was later found in.

Edited my post as my wording wasn't clear:

By stopping twice, it is strange to me. Was she or were "they" aware of that camera? Did someone decide that the dumping of the car had to be on camera so as to make it look like she acted alone? Were they/was she unaware of the camera so it's irrelevant? Did the first calls take place deliberately right at the base of the camera so whatever took place in location 1 could not be detected?

Ask me in an hour and I'm sure my mind will change again, though!

 

[Ontario Mom]

Something that I've wondered since the beginning is, regarding the 911 call the night of the event (Thurs 7/13)- Is it odd that the Carlee did not stay on the line with 911 dispatch until LE arrived? I know often when we read transcripts from 911 calls where the caller is potentially at risk (i.e. not calling to report a crime that has already occurred but rather a crime in progress), dispatch asks for the caller to stay on the line until LE/FD/EMS arrives. Is that only asked by dispatchers when the caller reports they are personally in imminent danger, or is there a possibility that Carlee may have hung up with dispatch before they asked, because she (Carlee) wanted to make her next call?

Another question- was she trying to reach her brother, and his girlfriend answered instead? This may have been answered by family early on but I can't seem to find it now. If so, was her brother someone she called frequently, or especially when she felt fearful or wanted to be on the phone with someone?

Not even really sure what any of the answers could mean to these questions, or if there's any relevance, but it is something that's stuck out to me/nagged me while reading and re-reading the details of the situation.

It very much stood out to me that she did not remain on the line until assistance had physically arrived. Especially considering the urgency of the call that it was a child, alone on the side of a very busy highway, at 9:30 at night.
I'd be very curious to hear what the dispatch operator had to say about how/why the call ended before assistance arrived.

I'd sure like to hear that 911 call.

 

[24Roses]

Wow! I've haven't been here in a few day. So thankful Carlee has returned home! I won't be able to get caught up, but hopefully LE can figure out what happened to her and resolve the situation in the long run.

 

[Quill]

There is no need for speculation about the phone location. Hoover PD have clearly stated:

"Hoover Police officers arrived on scene within five minutes of being dispatched, and several other officers arrived shortly behind. They located Carlee’s wig, cell phone and purse on the roadway near her vehicle, and Carlee’s Apple Watch was in her purse."

source: update on carlee russell case - Hoover Police Department

I think I may have read same article/report as you from media, but information straight from the Hoover PD states:

Hoover Police officers arrived on scene within five minutes of being dispatched, and several other officers arrived shortly behind. They located Carlee’s wig, cell phone and purse on the roadway near her vehicle, and Carlee’s Apple Watch was in her purse.

Source: update on carlee russell case - Hoover Police Department

At first I thought I was remembering something from early on in the case, and it has maybe been updated to reflect what you remembering reading (re: location of phone), but at the site I posted, Hoover PD has updated the page on an ongoing basis as new info becomes available, and their words regarding location of phone upon their (HPD) arrival on the scene has not changed. Also- I would agree that their description of the phone as being "near her vehicle" is not specific in terms of distance, but in my opinion it is not the same as the phone being found some distance from her car in the grass.

Yes, I agree with you. I don't see the use of the word "near" as an update. I think that they don't always get into details during an investigation and its possible that someone went into too much detail in their response on the phone's location. I know we read somewhere that was linked; I wish I could find it. I thought it was pretty specific, I think even including the mile marker it was found near. If anyone else recalls that I would love to hear it. There are multiple reasons I can think of for pulled back that information or hey, maybe someone said incorrect info. I think every article I have searched at this point uses the exact same official quote of "near". I think it says it all without getting specific. Hopefully we'll some clarification on that in the future.

 

[CamilleBSP]

I was a nurse for 10 years, and I have to disagree. Unresponsive on a 911 call generally means the person isn't conscious. It's a specific term used to medically denote the seriousness of someone's condition. And using this term when calling EMS can mean the difference of response times. JMO

Also noting, I worked MDS and Patient Care Plans before leaving my nursing career. I was trained to do mini mental assessments as well as overall nursing assessments. Per all reports I've seen, Carlee appears to have been acting very logically and reasonably, she notified police, notified family she was stopping, used her emergency blinkers to safely pull over etc. I have seen nothing at all to suggest any kind of mental break, let alone to the point of hallucinating and talking to a child who isn't there.
She was able to tell dispatch and family her location.
In assessing a person, a nurse would find out about orientation first. Do they know who they are, where they are, what day and time it is? Carlee appears to be fully orientated to person place and time.
Carlee being a nursing student herself, well that may be why she noticed the child on the road when nobody else seems to have seen one. Assessment skills are highly honed in nursing school and work and you start using them ALL the time, not just at work.
Until I see MSM that says different, I believe Carlee.

I was reading the whole "unresponsive/unconscious" discussion hoping someone with more authority and knowledge about it than I would bring up that "unresponsive" isn't used the way people were understanding it. If she wasn't talking, due to shock or whatever it may be, they'd prolly say something like they said about Rudy Farias, "nonverbal".

 

[mfmfan77]

One thing I can't quite wrap my mind around with this case, is why Carlee would call 911 AND a family member if she was planning her own disappearance. If this is all a hoax, why would she call 911 when she knew officers would be sent to the scene immediately instead of just abandoning her car somewhere less well-travelled and buying herself extra time before it was found? Surely she knew calling 911 about an abandoned toddler walking on the side of a major interstate would get an immediate police response.

If her parents had her phone's location and she didn't come home, they would surely go looking and find her car. She even called her mom to say she was on her way home with her mom's dinner. If she wanted to stage her own disappearance, wouldn't she just leave the car somewhere more inconspicuous and start her "escape" before her mom even had a reason to track her phone? I just can't make the idea of a staged disappearance make sense in my brain. I'd love to see anyone's thoughts!

 

[Midge Montana]

Are we yet able to hear Carlee’s 911 call alerting on the babe?
I think we will have a lot more to chew on with that.
Did they tell her to stay put? To try to contain the tot for safety?
How did she sound? Confused? Excited? Frightened?

 

[mfmfan77]

<modsnip: Quoted post was removed>
Back in my pre-web sleuth college days, I "rescued" a girl from the side of the road after her boyfriend had kicked her out of the car. I realized pretty quickly that it was probably a stupid idea, but thankfully she turned out to just be a nice girl down on her luck. Now being on this website, I realize it was a really stupid idea to put myself in that situation at 20 years old. But even with being less naive now, I would probably still stop for a toddler in the dark. I hate that this case has now made me second guess that choice.

 

[sandy_80]

there is really one important question mark
why is L.E silent ? and the family is talking

 

[CamilleBSP]

The parents did a sit-down interview with NBC News this morning.

Seems very vague, a lot of "we can't discuss the investigation," but the parents have mentioned "an abductor" that is still out there.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1681267517631737856

Here her mom describes her as in "not in a good state" and that she couldn't even hug her daughter properly because paramedics needed to take care of her... So the paramedics were already there when she arrived?

Is it me or MSM's reporting on this story is all over the place?

 

[imstilla.grandma]

 

[Megsc]

One thing I can't quite wrap my mind around with this case, is why Carlee would call 911 AND a family member if she was planning her own disappearance. If this is all a hoax, why would she call 911 when she knew officers would be sent to the scene immediately instead of just abandoning her car somewhere less well-travelled and buying herself extra time before it was found? Surely she knew calling 911 about an abandoned toddler walking on the side of a major interstate would get an immediate police response.

If her parents had her phone's location and she didn't come home, they would surely go looking and find her car. She even called her mom to say she was on her way home with her mom's dinner. If she wanted to stage her own disappearance, wouldn't she just leave the car somewhere more inconspicuous and start her "escape" before her mom even had a reason to track her phone? I just can't make the idea of a staged disappearance make sense in my brain. I'd love to see anyone's thoughts!

Yeah I mean why put so much effort into make it seem like she was kidnapped when she could have just dump her car somewhere and just run away.

 

[JerseyWasHome2]

It very much stood out to me that she did not remain on the line until assistance had physically arrived. Especially considering the urgency of the call that it was a child, alone on the side of a very busy highway, at 9:30 at night.
I'd be very curious to hear what the dispatch operator had to say about how/why the call ended before assistance arrived.

I'd sure like to hear that 911 call.

And how was her phone disconnected from the second call? They can tell if it was manually powered down.

 

[Van Helsing]

Yes, I agree with you. I don't see the use of the word "near" as an update. I think that they don't always get into details during an investigation and its possible that someone went into too much detail in their response on the phone's location. I know we read somewhere that was linked; I wish I could find it. I thought it was pretty specific, I think even including the mile marker it was found near. If anyone else recalls that I would love to hear it. There are multiple reasons I can think of for pulled back that information or hey, maybe someone said incorrect info. I think every article I have searched at this point uses the exact same official quote of "near". I think it says it all without getting specific. Hopefully we'll some clarification on that in the future.

I heard it in a scanner recording which we can't discuss. I posted about it thinking it was from a LE release. (I appreciate the moderators for keeping us out of trouble on things like this).

 

[mfmfan77]

Yeah I mean why put so much effort into make it seem like she was kidnapped when she could have just dump her car somewhere and just run away.

That's what I keep coming back to. It just doesn't make sense to me