Missing Sask. girl found in Regina

REGINA – An Amber Alert issued Tuesday for a missing four-year old Regina girl has been cancelled after the girl and her parents were located safe in Regina, RCMP confirmed on Wednesday.

The alert had been extended to North Dakota, after police confirmed that the girl, her mother and her father, who is suspected of abducting them, were seen Tuesday morning in southern Manitoba.

Police were hunting for Christopher Alan Martyn, a man previously convicted of manslaughter, who was suspected of kidnapping his estranged spouse Natasha Sentes, and their daughter Samantha Martyn.

Late Tuesday night, police said that Christopher and Samantha were last seen at a gas station in Manitou, Man., – about 542 kilometres southeast of Regina and 159 kilometres southwest of Winnipeg near the U.S. border – at about 6:49 a.m. Police believe that a woman travelling in the front seat of the vehicle was Natasha.

Ray Bamford, manager of Reds Cafe & Convenience in Manitou said there was little doubt that it was Samantha and her father, Christopher, who were at his cafe and gas station.

Police say video from the station shows the little girl and her father walking back to his car.

Bamford said the surveillance video from a few angles shows pretty clearly it was them.

He said he saw a woman, likely Sentes, in the car.

"She didn’t come in the cafe," Bamford said. "It looked like she was sleeping."

A restraining order – imposed last month when Martyn, 39, appeared in court for a peace bond application sought by his 34-year-old ex-partner Sentes – was supposed to keep them apart, but Martyn had arranged a visit with his daughter on Monday.

According to police, Sentes left her job around 10:30 p.m. Monday and was supposed to pick up her daughter, but they don’t know what happened after that.

Regina police were first alerted around 1 a.m. Tuesday when a friend of Sentes telephoned out of concern for the safety of the 34-year-old Regina woman and her daughter.

Regina police spokeswoman Lara Guzik told reporters Tuesday afternoon that it’s believed both Sentes and her daughter were abducted. "We have great concern for the safety of both Samantha and Natasha," she said.

While police would not disclose the basis of that concern, the Regina Leader-Post covered Martyn’s trial in 1992, which ended with a manslaughter conviction in the death of Joel Olson, a 29-year-old owner of a GM dealership. Olson was killed in the parking lot of an Oxbow, Sask., bar in November 1991 after confronting Martyn about $1,000 owed to Olson for car repairs.

Martyn hit Olson with his car, dragging him for 4.5 metres before driving off. Immediately after that incident, Martyn fled across the border to North Dakota, but returned the next day and was arrested.

While Martyn was originally sentenced to two years less a day in jail for what the court described as "motor manslaughter," the appeal court subsequently upped the penalty to 4 1/2 years in prison.

With files from the Regina Leader-Post and the Winnipeg Free Press