Yesterday morning, South Africa breathed a collective sigh of relief when six-year-old Amy-Leigh de Jager was reunited with her family.

Despite the kidnappers initially demanding R2 million for her release, no ransom was paid, with many speculating that the kidnappers had been frightened by the intense media coverage and search efforts.

That may well be true, and the Vaal community deserves an enormous amount of credit for their swift reaction in the hours following Amy-Leigh’s abduction.

TimesLIVE with some of those details:

Llewellynn Hemmens said when the incident happened on Monday morning, an alert was shared on community social media pages.

“The message spread like a veld fire. It was really crazy,” he said.

Security companies and private community forums immediately started patrolling through the streets to see if they could spot anything, he said. They later alerted community forums in Roodepoort, Randfontein, the East Rand and as far as Heidelberg and Potchefstroom.

“We asked them to be on the lookout for any suspicious movements on the roads, like vehicles driving at high speed. Every white Toyota Fortuner became a suspicious car, and that was quite interesting.”

…He said the groups never stopped walking and patrolling through the streets of Vanderbijlpark until late Monday in the hope of finding clues.

The searches only stopped entirely at around 2AM on Tuesday morning, when news spread that Amy-Leigh had been found.

In the video below, Hannes van Zyl, one of the first responders to Amy-Leigh being found, spoke about the emotions he felt:

It’s understood that Amy-Leigh was dropped off by two people, close to the Shakespeare Inn in Vanderbijlpark:

She was told her mother was waiting for her at the shop across the road. The child started screaming when she realised it was not her mother. Two people stopped to ease her distress, and they walked her to a police station.

Coenie Herbst, the principal at Kollegepark Laerskool, visited Amy-Leigh at home, and said she missed her classmates, and was eager to return to school.

The deputy principal of the school, Juanita Louw, added that the school’s security has now been ramped up.

It is not yet known when Amy-Leigh will return to school, and her family has asked for time to allow them to rest in the wake of their traumatic few days.

[sources:timeslive&timeslive]