Girl missing since 2019 found alive under staircase

A child who was reported missing in 2019 when she was 4 years old was found hidden under a wooden staircase with her noncustodial mother, in a home officials had visited several times while investigating her disappearance, authorities said.
The child, Paislee Joann Shultis, now 6, was reported missing on July 13, 2019, from Cayuga Heights, a village on the outskirts of Ithaca, New York. At the time, she was believed to have been abducted by her noncustodial parents, Kimberly Cooper and Kirk Shultis Jr., police said in a news release.
Paislee and her mother were found Monday when investigators spotted "a pair of tiny feet" in a secret space under wooden steps leading to a basement.
#MiguelMarquez #AC360 #CNN

71 comments

    1. Blame the law on that, not the police

      Like the video said, the Police couldn’t really do a proper check without a warrant

    2. @Stale Buns Maybe they had a warrant, but it didn’t include the whole house, or at least the part with the stairs.

    3. That’s what I don’t get. They said they had searched the house but the people wouldn’t let them check the basement and had become agitated about them investigating because they felt harassed. Well, that right there would alert me that they are hiding something…in the basement!!! Any people who were seriously concerned about the child’s welfare would’ve said go ahead. Since when do cops just go away because people feel harassed? Hell…they kick people’s doors down in the middle of the night over drugs and blow people away in their beds but they just leave when the suspects are getting agitated by their search. Bizarre to say the least.

    4. Nowhere in the clip it seems that the kid was abused or held captive against her will. Seems like the kid wanted to stay with her biological parents and probably ran away from her legal custodians. This reporting is biased.

  1. This doesn’t appear to be remotely similar to the Elizabeth Smart abduction or any other child abduction where the child is snatched by a stranger. For reasons that haven’t been publicly disclosed, the biological parents lost custody of Paislee to the grandmother. Obviously the court saw a serious problem if it stripped the biological parents of custody. However, the grandfather apparently sided with the parents against the grandmother and the court. Instead of surrendering the child to the grandmother, the biological parents ran off and hid her with her grandfather. So she has been living with her biological parents the entire time. Separating her from her parents in a police raid to give her to a stranger (a grandmother she doesn’t know) is traumatic in and of itself. Running off with the child was not a rational way for the parents to handle a custody dispute and is some insight into why they lost custody in the first place.

    1. @Luc jacobson Doesn’t really matter what you type in the comments section! People can easily see what you are! The Devil has numerous demons working for him/her! Enjoy hell I think it is very hot!!!

    2. @BlacProphet

      You don’t need an hour long segment. But a single sentence: “The child was removed from her biological parents because _________” would be sufficient to help viewers understand the family court’s decision and to quell any legitimate concerns by viewers that perhaps the parents had suffered an injustice by having their child taken from them.

    3. @Dean Todd Please stop it. Go do some research if you are really that concerned about those people personal business! I would assume that since it is a child they are dealing with the public will not have access to the records! If people love misery then they should go and watch the movie!!!!

    4. Saw the terms ‘white parents’ and ‘kid hiding under staircase’ and sent the story to their racial propaganda wing for the narrative.

    1. @Happy Raccoon What does the religion or orientation of her father have to do with the hell she lived through during her kidnapping or, more germane here, her experience of being rescued?

    2. @Wayne Ferrell you mean the guy who kidnapped and then repeatedly raped her? Is that what we’re calling a ‘relationship’? Or by ‘Ms. Smart’ do you mean her mother?

    3. @K Hill like I said, Mormonism is central to the Smart story. The polygamous kidnappers we’re Mormon, Smarts are old polygamists. The kidnapper was working at Smarts, they talked and shared their hope for the return of The True and Everlasting Covenant of 132. It’s a sordid sad story

    4. @Happy Raccoon Yeah, the overwhelming majority of kidnappings happen where the abductor knows the victim…so both being Mormon in a city that’s majority mormon at the time of the kidnapping is hardly relevatory. Still waiting on how the father’s asserted sexuality factors into the equation, though…

  2. I think those are 2 cases that shouldn’t be compare. Little girl was with her biological parents and they just said she wasn’t abused. Of course it’s criminal but that’s way different then strangers abuse

    1. i feel like the ordeal was that she lived with her parents and only had to hide when the state came to catch her and take her away, which is what is happening to her now. not sure there are any reports of abuse or anything else they would have said so. all that is being reported is that the parents and grandfather hid the child from the state.

    2. @ObesePuppies yeah the mental trauma of being ripped from her biological parents by the state will follow her all her life.

    3. As victim of developmental trauma disorder (childhood complex PTSD), there is no doubt this child will need much love, nurturing, and therapy. I pray she gets it.

  3. Pick any incident totally separate from this. When reported on, no one wants to believe that a person or persons can do such a thing. Then finally the evidence comes out. And that goes from the Plumber to the Politician.

  4. Looks like the parents took good care if her. No sign of abuse, healthy, cognitive… I wonder why the parents took her back and why they even lost custody. Many times the state just moves for that when the home is OK. I know, I was one of those kids.

    1. Thank you for this, and sorry your family went thru that. I wish more would offer their experience, it’s more valuable than they realize.

    1. @SAINT 65 How do you know she wasn’t abused? There was a reason her parents lost custody and there are steps to follow outlined by the court. Had they successfully completed the requirements, they would’ve legally had her returned and the fact that they did what they did just shows how bad their judgement is. You don’t just take the child when the court has determined that you aren’t capable of being the full time custodian. When the courts are involved you have to go through the appointment steps to determine that you are capable of meeting all of the child’s needs. We see biological parents doing horrible things to their own flesh and blood sadly, way too often as in the Turpin family where they starved their 13 kids and chained them to their beds for years!

    2. @King of The Jungle Bishop
      You are not denying the fact they put the kid in that gross hole; you are only febbly attempting to justify that disgusting & disturbing action.
      Why are you trying to protect them?
      Do you put kids in crawl spaces as well?

    3. @SAINT 65 I’m not trying to protect them but as a parent I couldn’t imagine losing my kid and I would do anything to get them back if they was taken from me. They was under investigation police came to their house on several occasions. So yes if my daughter have to hide under some stairs for no longer then 15mind until the police leave then yes. You acting like she was under the stairs for hours or days on. You trying to point blame on the parents for wanting to take care of their own daughter. They could’ve went on and lived life with no care in the world that they had a daughter but no they didn’t they wanted to be in her life. So how is that wrong?

    4. @King of The Jungle Bishop
      How long was she hidden away?
      How traumatic was that for her?
      Why was she taken away from the parents?
      For 2 1/2 years did the parents ever replacate their actions that forced the courts to remove her originally?

  5. What you said about a lifetime ahead of her warmed my heart. ❤️
    Thank goodness she was found. Sometimes family causes many problems. Thank God this man found her. God bless him. He saved her a long life of pain.

    1. The kid probably wanted to stay with her biological parents. The kid was not held captive. This reporting is just biased.

  6. I hope this little girl gets all the help, physically and mentally, that she will need to sustain her and allow her to have a good life.

    1. As victim of developmental trauma disorder (childhood complex PTSD), there is no doubt this child will need much love, nurturing, and therapy. I pray she gets it.

  7. Idk why she was taken from her parents in the first place but she was taken back from her real parents. So I don’t see what the problem is, they wanted their daughter back and she wasn’t harm at all. People need to stop saying the little girl gonna be messed up, how? When she was with her REAL family. Why they acting like she was kidnapped by strangers🤔. She was with her birth mother, father and grandfather. Maybe I’m looking at it different then what y’all looking at it.

    1. @Dean Todd was the family running from Nazis? We’re they at risk of being put into interment camps? No? Then nothing like that

    2. @zadinal

      The child was not “living under a staircase,” she hid under the staircase when police came to search the house.

    3. @Dean Todd go take a look at those photos and tell me she didn’t spend significant amounts of time in there. How many times did the police search the house. A dozen.

  8. Before judgement we should first know why the state feels it has grounds to break up the biological family there is no limits to the things I would do for my kids I don’t think there is enough information for condemnation

    1. Not enough info for condemnation for either side. I see commenters who said, “Look at the mug shots, the parents were using drugs or alcohol.” Wow, there’s a snap judgment based on nothing of substance. Others are certain the parents were good simply because biological parents who feed their children can’t possibly be unfit. Trust me, malnutrition is NOT the only way to hurt a child. The only thing I’m sure of is that this kid is terrified and has been living in fear. The parents may be well-meaning or evil, I ‘m not arrogant enough to decide based on one photo.

    2. @Margaret Wordnerd

      Yes! I have no strong convictions one way or the other on this particular case. But I do feel CNN dropped the ball by not providing vital background information needed to form such conclusions.

  9. I’ve been looking into this story since it aired and not one article knows how the parents lost custody to begin with, but somewhere along the proceedings the grandmother didn’t obtain custody so the state granted some guardian.

    So my question is at what lengths would you go to get back your child if you’ve done nothing wrong to begin with nor have any money to legally fight for your child?

    All the articles said the child was healthy and fed well. What neglectful parents have they arrested in the past who fed their kids?

    Fear for a multitude of people to take you away from loving parents is abuse at it’s best in my opinion.

    1. Assuming, that you are a good person, I understand your point of view, but…..think about it, why was that child placed with legal guardian???….there must be a reason!….if this so called parents were suitable to keep this child, wouldn’t they try the legal way??….as a normal, good father, would you force your child to hide in dirty hole???….think about what the little girl had to go trough…..

    2. Yea..I’d not like it if my kids were taken away and I can understand a family not being able to accept that

    3. Nathaniel: So what you’re saying is that you would m’urder your daughter and then com’mit sui’cid’e? And “justify” it by saying you had to do it to stay together? In Heaven? It’s people like you that make me overjoyed we have pri’son’s. And if you do something to your daughter that makes good people take your daughter away from you, and you fight to get her back so that you can do more of it, you deserve everything you get.

  10. So, they weren’t making her live under there. It was a hiding place because the parents did not have custody? It would be interesting to know why the parents lost custody.
    The reporters are making it sound like the kid was locked away underneath the stairs continuously and was abused.

    1. Yeah that’s what I was also wondering 2mins into the clip. Cnn probably just saw white people and assumed they were the abusers.

  11. Elizabeth has not fully processed her experience and it will likely take a lifetime. I’m glad she is being given the opportunity to speak to her experience and that if she continues to work in this area, she pursues an academic integration to help her more fully express herself in a way which is constructive to other victims as well as to generalize the experience in ways which reflect the universal experience of powerlessness and a method for the transformative reframing of an identity of victimization towards reclaiming one’s autonomy. Just her level of composure and trust is a model for us all of resilience and how to make one’s life meaningful again through the choice to help oneself by helping others.

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