US: Boy abducted at age of 6 found alive after 70 years through online DNA match
Image of Luis Armando Albino who was abducted at the age of six.
A 70-year-long search by a California family for a six-year-old child, who was kidnapped in 1951, came to an end after they found the child alive and grown up as a man.
Luis Armando Albino is a retired firefighter and Vietnam War veteran who was staying on the East Coast. When he was six years old, he was kidnapped from a park in Oakland, California in 1951.
The child was playing with his older brother when a Spanish-speaking woman, who was wearing a bandana, asked him to come with her if he wanted candy.
That was the last time many of his family members saw him, including his mother who died in 2005.
However, the family did not lose the hope of finding him and kept his memories alive.
Luis was flown across the country after he was kidnapped and was raised by a couple who lived on the East Coast.
How did the family find their lost member?
In a twist of fate, Luis’niece Alida Alequin took an online DNA test in 2020 “just for fun” and it showed a 22 per cent match with a stranger who then turned out to be Luis.
The niece tried to reach out to Luis but failed in her attempt. In early 2024, she again started the search and looked into microfilm archives of the Oakland Tribune at the Oakland Public Library.
Along with evidence collected from the archives and a picture of Luis and Roger, Alequin went to a law enforcement agency and asked them to open a new missing person case.
Oakland police appreciated the efforts of Alequin’s efforts and said that she “played an integral role in finding her uncle” and that “the outcome of this story is what we strive for.”
On June 20, the police informed them that their uncle had been found.
“We didn’t start crying until after the investigators left. I grabbed my mom’s hands and said, ‘We found him.’ I was ecstatic," said Alequin, as reported by The New York Post.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation helped Luis and his family in travelling to California to meet his long-lost family.
Speaking to theBay Area News Group, Alequin said that Luis “hugged me and said, ‘Thank you for finding me’ and gave me a kiss on the cheek.”
“They grabbed each other and had a really tight, long hug. They sat down and just talked,” she said.
(With inputs from agencies)