Central Alberta family of 6 located safe: RCMP

A mother and her five children who went missing from their central Alberta home have been located and they are safe, RCMP said Wednesday morning.

On Tuesday, Rimbey RCMP said the family’s whereabouts had not been confirmed in nearly a month.

RCMP said they were last living in the Meridian Beach area of Ponoka County and going to school in Lacombe.

In an update just after 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, RCMP said all six members of the family had been located safe. Citing privacy concerns, the RCMP did not release information on where the family members were located.

RCMP got involved after the Lacombe Police Service was contacted by the school, which said the kids stopped showing up for class.

“We did receive our initial call from one of the schools where all the children had been removed from,” RCMP media relations officer Troy Savinkoff said Tuesday. “The circumstances of all that are very strange.”

Police said the mother last spoke with family over the phone on April 3, though the whereabouts of her and her children hasn’t been confirmed since mid-March.

On March 28, the Calgary police told Rimbey RCMP a 2013 Black Dodge Durango, registered to the mother, was found in the city on March 24.

The vehicle was abandoned in a private parking lot in southeast Calgary near the Bow Habitat Station. Police said personal possessions were found inside it.

The family home near Gull Lake was also abandoned.

Savinkoff said Tuesday that while the investigation hasn’t revealed anything nefarious, the situation is odd.

“It’s not normal for a family to abandon their home, abandoned a vehicle — there were effects in that vehicle — and then just move on and not have any contact with the roots or a lot of people that they knew or spoke to where they used to reside.”

Savinkoff said of course, people can up and move on their own accord but it’s concerning when there are so many kids involved.

The situation does not warrant an Amber Alert, “but that doesn’t mean that there still is not a general concern, just based on the circumstances,” he said.