Policewoman Harviette Donaldson went home after her shift on the night of Thursday, October 14 and immediately learned that her nine-year-old neighbour was abducted from their Bath, St Thomas, community.

Before Donaldson could even react, the nine-year-old girl’s quick-thinking, older sister ran to her house where she would often do homework, and begged her to check her security footage to see if there was anything out of the ordinary.

The security cameras, Donaldson said, were installed by her and her partner just three weeks before the abduction and were instrumental in the case.

“I came home after seven, to eight. The girl’s sister came to me and she told me that they can’t find her sister and then she asked me if I could run back the camera to see what took place or if anything took place. I said, ‘Fine’, and I came in and run back the camera. That’s when we saw the footage with him [Davian Bryan] holding her and stuff,” Donaldson told the Jamaica Observer.

“The cameras were installed recently, so the people on the lane would’ve known about them,” she continued.

When she checked the footage, “We saw when he passed and when he was coming back with the girl. That’s how we knew that it was an abduction. If it wasn’t for the camera, then we wouldn’t know where to go and we would be searching in vain. We would just be assuming what happened. Having the footage, seeing when he took her and having a time frame, that gave us a better idea of what we were looking at and how to deal with it.”

But she had an inkling that something was really wrong even before the footage confirmed that.

“More time, the girl and her older sister would come over to my house and do work and stuff. The type of girl she is, she is not a child that would leave without saying she is leaving. She is a very reserved child. So, the fact that they were looking before I came and nobody seemed to know where she was, there was alarm.”

The nine-year-old girl, who was found alive two days later, was abducted from her home, allegedly by Davian Bryan, a man who police said is before the court on rape and illegal possession of firearm charges in the neighbouring parish of Portland.

She was alone on her veranda, playing with her puppy, when Bryan came to purchase an item some time after 6:00 pm. Phylisa’s older sister then discovered that she had gone missing.

Donaldson told the Sunday Observer that the girl’s sister was so precise, that in one search, they saw her sister being carried from the lane.

“She knew the exact time frame. She told me to run the camera from about 6:10 pm to 6:20 pm. When we checked the footage, he [Bryan] passed at 6:12 pm. So, once we saw him and saw him with the girl, we just stopped there and sent out the pictures and stuff and started searching,” she recalled.

But Donaldson, a mother, couldn’t help but be stunned when she saw the footage.

‘Oh, my God. This coulda happen to anybody child,’ she said to her herself, completely bewildered while reviewing the recording.

“My kids were outside also… like minutes before. We don’t know if he would’ve just taken any child that he saw. Even in the night, I was thinking and looking and saying that it could’ve been my child. It felt so real because it was so close to home. If it wasn’t for the cameras, maybe the girls wouldn’t have been found,” she told the Sunday Observer.

After she saw it, Donaldson said she asked for a recent picture of the nine-year-old girl and put it up on her WhatsApp status. After that, she sent it to the Jamaica Constabulary Force’s (JCF) Instagram page, and then made calls to the missing persons’ hotline. Community members then went out on a search.

The search ended without success and the following day, Donaldson checked the footage again. That time, she discovered something else.

“We didn’t have any time to go through the footage that night. The other day now, we went through again and we saw when he first passed with a knife, went down to the house and then when he was coming back,” she recalled.

Bryan was picked up on three different cameras that showed three different angles. One camera showed him entering the community, one showed him entering the lane on which the girl lives, and the other showed him exiting the lane with the girl.

The nine-year-old was eventually found the Saturday morning and amidst the excitement and joy, the perpetrator snatched another girl — a 13-year-old — from the same community. Residents were again plunged into dismay.

Donaldson told the Sunday Observer that after the news broke, she got an urge to check the security footage again.

“I checked again. But I was thinking that because of the location of the second girl, he wouldn’t have taken this path,” she said, noting that her thoughts were correct.

She didn’t see him on the footage, but she saw him with her own eyes a few hours later.

“He came back on the lane. I was sitting right here and my sister-in-law was upstairs and came to the garbage bin. We saw him and started shouting and stuff and by the time the crowd came, he went back through the bushes.”

A police source told the Sunday Observer that the 13-year-old girl who was found the next day recalled that when Bryan took her, he tied her up and left her.

”So, when he went back there to that part of the community, it was to distract the crowd. When they saw him, everybody thought he would’ve gone back to the river, but he then left with the second girl. It was a distraction to pull them away from him,” the officer who requested anonymity said.

Meanwhile, Donaldson, who has since been praised by community members, said she is glad she and her partner had decided to go ahead with the cameras.

“As you know, business-wise, it is always good to have cameras. Just for records, safe keeping and stuff like that. Initially, we didn’t have one. It was like three weeks before the incident that we actually put up the cameras. We don’t have enough space inside, so we have to store some stuff outside. That was the main reason we actually installed the cameras. Up to this day, we are very grateful because it gave us something to look for immediately.”

She added: “Even though the girls were found and we are very grateful, the area is still tense because he’s still out there. And until he is found, it will remain that way. The lane is dead. Everybody is inside. Kids are not outside again like one time. I’ve been here for 32 years and it’s the first that something like this has happened.