Source: Hoover Police Department / Hoover PD
As Carlee Russell recovers after going missing last week and being found in Alabama, her boyfriend expressed how she spent two days fighting for her life.
The country was riveted as word spread of the disappearance of Alabama nursing student Carlee Russell after she made an emergency call to help a toddler on the side of a highway. Many social media users, eager to help find the missing young Black woman, helped to spur the search for her afterward until late Saturday night when Russell arrived back at her home. Her boyfriend, Thomar Latrell Simmons, wrote a Facebook post shortly after expressing his relief and also shedding some light on the ordeal.
“She was literally fighting for her life for 48 hours, so until she’s physically & mentally stable again she is not able to give any updates or whereabouts on her kidnapper at this very moment,” he wrote.
The post created Sunday (July 16) contains pictures of Simmons and Russell together. He continued: “I have been going nonstop since I received the call that she was missing on Thursday night. I know she would’ve done the same for me, so I wasn’t going to give up until I saw her face again!”
Simmons expressed his thanks to all of those concerned including family and friends who helped with the search and even addressed those skeptical of Russell’s disappearance or speculating he had a hand in it. “I was straight tunnel vision, even when I would get on social media on my downtime & see some of the false allegations & assumptions about me having something to do with her abduction would have me discouraged at times I didn’t give up & kept my faith!” he wrote.
Carlee Russell was taken to UAB Hospital from her home in Hoover after she arrived for a medical examination. Authorities say that the investigation will be a “tedious process,” and Russell’s parents have declined to talk about where she was for those 48 hours. Talitha Russell, Carlee’s mother, did express annoyance over those skeptical of her daughter’s disappearance and return in an interview with the Today show. “I just didn’t know people could be so evil,” she said. “She’s having to deal with the trauma of people making completely false allegations about her.”
