A Texas father has been reunited with his 3-year-old daughter who was allegedly abducted by his ex-wife and flown across the globe for the past five months in a “divorce gone wrong.”
Rilee Crouch, now 4, was handed over to her father Dakota Crouch on Sunday after the child and her mother Lillian Crouch were tracked down in Panama, according to ValleyCentral.
Dakota last saw Rilee on July 2 on South Padre Island, a resort beach town roughly 20 miles from the Mexico border, when he returned the toddler to her mother’s home for custodial visitation.
The pair vanished when Dakota returned to pick up his daughter days later.
Lillian is accused of taking Rilee into Mexico, where she holds dual citizenship, before fleeing into Central America and Europe, the state argued on Monday.
Dakota claimed that he hadn’t been able to contact Lillian and that she did not show up to their court hearings during the custody battle.
“Her phone goes straight to voicemail,” Dakota told the outlet in August. “Her own counsel withdrew from the case because she was unable to get a hold of her. The counselor involved in the case wasn’t able to get her to appear and kept giving her excuses.”
He publicly pleaded for his daughter’s safe return to Texas.
“This was the third go-around of times that she has denied me visitations,” Dakota added. “She had already been warned by the judge to please stop this and this time it has taken a turn for the worse.”
In December, Lillian and Rilee allegedly flew to Turkey but were turned away when authorities recognized their passports were fraudulent.
Texas officials believe Lillian was trying to flee to “war-torn” Israel with the toddler when they arrived in Turkey.
The 29-year-old mother was forced to return to Central America and landed in Panama without a visa or US passport to return home.
The state claimed Lillian and her uncle walked around the Panama airport with Rilee for two days since they weren’t permitted to leave, putting the child “at risk in several situations” during the suspected abduction.
US Marshals located Lillian and Rilee and escorted them back to Texas, where she was arrested.
Dakota and Lillian were married for less than three years and divorced in 2022, according to the Port Isabel-South Padre Press.
Three weeks after Lillian allegedly fled the US, a Texas judge suspended her visitation and access to Rilee, the PISPS reported.
Dakota was granted full custody on Aug. 19.
Lillian’s lawyer told the South Padre Island Municipal Court on Monday that the alleged abduction revolved around a “domestic issue from a divorce gone wrong.”
She will be placed under house arrest and will wear an electronic monitoring device. The state requested her bond be set at $1 million, but a judge lowered it to $110,000.
