GREAT POND, St Ann — Mikayla Manasseh, the five-year-old girl who mysteriously disappeared from her home Monday morning, returned home yesterday just as mysteriously.

Mikayla was returned home shortly after midnight, allegedly by the men who grabbed her while she slept on a bed with four other children at her Warrick Mount home here some time between 3:00 am and 5:00 am Monday.

“I was on the phone talking to my friend when I heard someone calling ‘mummy, mummy’ but because I was so tired I thought I was sleeping and dreaming; and since she went missing every time I try to get some sleep I dream that she calling out for me,” said Odesia Oliver, the child’s mother.

“I heard the calling ‘mummy, mummy, mummy’ again, and I rushed to my mother and started to scream that the baby was at the back of the house calling me and everybody rushed out towards the back, and then I see my brother coming with her in his arms,” Oliver said.

“…Because of the screaming, people from the community started to rush towards the house because they thought it was something bad, so a lot of people rush towards the house with sticks and stones and so forth,” she added.

An overjoyed Oliver, who spoke to the Jamaica Observer from the St Ann’s Bay Hospital where Mikayla was admitted for mandatory medical checks, said she felt relieved and happy that her daughter had been returned. “I’m just so happy right now; I’m overjoyed. Thanks be to God,” Oliver said.

However, while family members and residents celebrate, there are still several unanswered questions surrounding the disappearance and the ‘magical reappearance’ of the little girl.

Acting police commanding officer for the parish, Superintendent Dudley Scott, said the police were continuing their probe into the matter and that the Centre for the Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse (CISOCA) has been brought into the matter.

“… CISOCA has been mandated to take over the investigation because we still have to look into this mystery in terms of her disappearance and her return,” Scott told the Observer yesterday.

Meanwhile, the officer in charge of the Ocho Rios Police Division, Superintendent Gary Francis, told reporters yesterday that the police were happy that the girl has been reunited with her family, but said investigations have since broadened.

Said Francis: “Although we are rejoicing, we recognise that the investigations even more (need to) intensify; we want to find out what would be responsible for, one, the mysterious disappearance and, two, the even more mysterious reappearance of young Mikayla.”

Superintendent Francis said the police needs to know if there was an intruder in the community and yesterday appealed to persons who might have any information on the matter to contact the police.

Asked whether the child would return to live in her Warrick Mount environment, Francis responded, “This is not a question I could respond to because this is a multi-agency approach.”

He continued: “The CDA (Child Development Agency) has (an) interest, and depending on their findings, their evaluation of the whole socio-economic background and so forth and to see what transpired, their recommendation will have to be a part of any decision that is taken, and also depending on what the medical officer has to say.”

Superintendent Francis, meanwhile, said that the incident had caused serious emotional stress and he said that the probe was open and that the police could not highlight anyone as suspect or single out family members, but that investigators would go where the evidence leads.

Yesterday, Oliver said that her daughter seemed to be in good physical health and that she was her usual playful self. She explained that in little ‘bits and pieces’ she had started to relate some information of her whereabouts over the last two days to the family.

“She will say a little bit here and when I ask again she hold back, so I know even though she is playing and talking

and behaving her usual self, she is traumatised,” the child’s mother said.

She said, however, that the child had told family members that she was being held in a house by a man who fed her dumpling and chicken the first day and dumpling and fish on the second day. The meals, she said, were served with ‘lime

juice’ (lemonade).

“She was wearing the same clothes that she disappeared in and she smelled like smoke, so I asked her how come she smell like smoke, and she told me that the man cook the food on wood fire,” the mother added.

Mikayla reportedly also told family members that she was taken back to the house by the man who took her away and that he placed her over the fence of the yard and told her to call her mother.

Residents who heard the loud commotion and rushed to the house when Mikayla was found immediately launched a search of the area for the man who reportedly returned her, but that search turned up nothing.

Michie Manasseh, the girl’s father, who resides in Port Maria, St Mary, was lost for words yesterday when he spoke to the Observer about his daughter’s safe return yesterday.

“I’m just happy, it’s the happiest day of my life, I don’t feel hungry again or nothing like that, I’m just happy she has returned,” Manasseh said. Related Stories:Mystery as girl, 5, goes missing‘Please bring back my baby!’Missing 5-year-old Mikayla Manasseh found