CNN — 

Police shared new details Wednesday on the case of Carlethia “Carlee” Nichole Russell, the Alabama woman who went missing for 49 hours last week after calling 911 to report a toddler walking alone on the side of the highway.

At a news conference, Hoover Police Chief Nick Derzis said the investigation continues but authorities do not believe there is a threat to the community, which is just south of Birmingham.

Derzis told reporters no one has reported a missing child and investigators have found no evidence of one.

The chief said officers “have been unable to verify” most of Russell’s initial statement, though they want to interview her again.

Russell’s mother has said she believes her daughter was abducted before she returned home two days later on foot. “Carlee has given detectives her statement and hopefully they are pursuing her abductor,” Talitha Robinson-Russell said in a statement to CNN affiliate WBRC. 

Derzis told reporters that investigators have learned Carlee Russell took items from work, stopped at a restaurant to get food and bought snacks at Target before she went missing. He also spoke about web searches on her cell phone in the lead-up to her disappearance. 

CNN has reached out to her parents for comment.

Russell was driving Thursday to her home in Hoover from her job in Birmingham, about 10 miles to the north, when she called 911 to say she was stopping her car to check on a child and then called a family member who lost contact with her – though the line remained open, according to the Hoover Police Department.

Read more here: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/07/19/us/what-we-know-carlee-russell-alabama/index.html