Amanda Berry, one of the three women found alive Monday after vanishing a decade ago, embraced her sister during an emotional reunion in Cleveland.
It was a moment her family held out hope for against all odds.
Berry, 27, met her older sister, Beth Serrano, at the hospital.
Her incredible escape from a home where she and two other women were apparently held against their will by three brothers made national news.
Also hospitalized is a 6-year-old girl whom Amanda Berry reportedly gave birth to while in captivity. Berry was reported missing on April 21, 2003.
After leaving her job at a Burger King the day before her 17th birthday, Amanda was never seen again until yesterday, when she miraculously emerged.
While her mother died in 2006 from heart failure, the teen’s family never gave up the search, posting fliers and tying ribbons on trees in her honor.
“I looked, day by day,” Serrano said. “I see a girl walking down the street – it’s an instinct, you just look, you know? Could that be her? Will I ever see her walking by?”
Then, in 2012, a prisoner in the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility gave information to police indicating a vacant lot where Berry’s body was supposedly buried.
The tip turned out to be a hoax after investigators came up empty.
That made Amanda Berry’s sudden reemergence even more stunning to police, who are investigating how she managed to stay hidden for so long.
The other women found with her – identified as Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight – were kidnapped in separate incidences around the same time.
DeJesus, now 23, went missing in 2004. Knight, now 19, vanished in 2002. The women were being held only a few miles from where they had disappeared.
A neighbor heard Berry screaming Monday when her alleged captor wasn’t home, and he took her to safety. She called 911, her voice frantic and shaking.
“Please help me, I am Amanda Berry,” she told the dispatcher. “I’ve been kidnapped, and I’ve been missing for 10 years. And I’m here, I’m free now.”
The dispatcher assured her police were on the way to the Cleveland home.
“I’m Amanda Berry, I’ve been in the news for 10 years,” she said again.
Law enforcement arrived and rescued DeJesus and Knight as well.
The three women and the young girl, Berry’s daughter, were taken to Cleveland’s Metro Health Medical Center, where they were described in fair condition.
Police have arrested three brothers, ages 50, 52 and 54, in connection with the women’s disappearances, but did not immediately confirm their identities.