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Missing Ohio Lawyer Found In Cobb County

Saturday, December 8, 2007 – updated: 5:32 pm EST December 8, 2007

A pregnant Ohio attorney who had been missing since Wednesday was found alive Saturday behind a suburban Atlanta amusement park, and police said she reported having been abducted. There were no immediate arrests.

Karyn McConnell-Hancock, 35, who is six months pregnant, told Cobb County, Ga., police that two men and a woman abducted her. She was last seen outside a juvenile court building in Toledo, Ohio, around 9 a.m. Wednesday, police spokesman Sgt. Dana Pierce said.

The suspects reportedly dumped her out of a vehicle in Georgia on Saturday morning, and she wandered to a back gate to the Six Flags Over Georgia amusement park, Pierce said. The woman flagged down a motorist, who called police at about 6:45 a.m. The park is located in Austell, 15 miles northwest of Atlanta.

She appeared to be in good health. The motorist she flagged down described her as disoriented, according to Toledo police spokeswoman Capt. Diana Ruiz-Krause.

Details on where she was between Wednesday and Saturday, descriptions of her alleged abductors and the vehicle they were driving were unclear. Ruiz-Krause said McConnell-Hancock called her husband Thursday afternoon to say she had been kidnapped. Police were unable to trace the call, which was brief.

The woman's car was located in western Cobb County shortly after 2 p.m. EST on Saturday. Police are holding it for processing.

By midday Saturday, the FBI had been called in to assist, Pierce said. An FBI spokesman in Atlanta, Stephen Emmett, declined to comment, referring questions to his counterpart in Ohio. The FBI office there declined to make a spokesman available for comment.

McConnell-Hancock had been having trouble with a client and had received suspicious phone calls, her husband told police in Ohio.

McConnell-Hancock's father, C. Allen McConnell, a Municipal Court judge in Ohio, had pleaded for his daughter's safe return.

Her husband told police she didn't pick up their son Wednesday. He tried to call her cell phone, but it was turned off, police said.

Georgia authorities were interviewing McConnell-Hancock Saturday. Toledo police were making arrangements to travel to Georgia and escort her back to Ohio.

News that McConnell-Hancock had been found unharmed was met with relief by friends and family.

McConnell-Hancock's mother, Tempie McConnell, said her daughter sounded "very shaken, very nervous" when the two talked briefly on Saturday.

"My little grandson was just very excited that his mom's coming home," Tempie McConnell said.

McConnell-Hancock's husband, Laurence Hancock, who is bishop of Final Harvest Church in Toledo, Ohio, said that when he spoke to his wife Saturday they did not talk about what happened during her disappearance.

McConnell-Hancock is a former city councilwoman in Toledo.

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