Michigan police say that a family of four who had been reported missing on October 16 were found.
Relatives and police were concerned when the dad displayed what authorities referred to as “paranoid behaviors” during a 911 response to the home.
The Fremont Police Department thanked everyone who helped locate the Cirigliano family in Wisconsin, after they left their home in Michigan under unusual circumstances.
According to the police, the family of four, which includes the father, 51-year-old Anthony John Cirigliano, his wife, 51-year-old Suzette Lee Cirigliano, and their two sons, Brandon Michael and Noah Alexander Cirigliano, 19 and 15, abruptly left their Fremont, Michigan home on October 16. The two teenagers are both autistic.
The family members turned their mobile phones off and left the mom’s elderly mother, who has dementia and needs a full-time caregiver, as well as their pets, behind. Other relatives found this odd and notified police after the elderly grandmother was found wandering about the neighborhood and disoriented on October 17, a day after the family left home.
Tim Rodwell, the Fremont Police Chief, said that the grandmother is being cared for by other family members.
Before they found the family, Chief Rodwell had received calls from concerned family relatives, especially because no member of the Cirigliano family had been answering their phones, and they had not been in contact with anyone about leaving home.
Police received various tips from the public and were eventually alerted that the family had been spotted at a Gulliver gas station on October 17. The gas station manager called police and told them she believed she had seen the family they were looking for at the gas station, and the police confirmed the sighting through a surveillance video.
Chief Rodwell said the footage recorded the family purchasing food and filling up their car with gas just before 11 am.
Why were family and police so concerned about this family who seemed to be taking a private family road trip?
The family was reported missing after police responded to a 911 call from the Cirigliano family home just after midnight on October 16. Mr. Cirigliano had called 911 and told the police that he had vital information about the terrorist attacks that happened on September 11, 2001.
What specifically concerned the cops was dad’s statement: “People want to erase me from the face of the Earth.” He said that his family needed protection from the police.
Police officers who spoke to him grew concerned about his mental health, and they talked to his wife and the two boys to check on them and make sure they were okay.
When police investigated the family’s sudden disappearance, they did not find signs of struggle, violence, or foul play at the house.
Everyone who knows Mr. Cirigliano describes him as a loving dad and a family-oriented person.
Authorities and the family’s neighbors say that the disappearance of the Cirigliano family is uncharacteristic as the family spends a lot of time in the house and doesn’t travel far whenever they leave home.
According to Chief Rodwell, the Ciriglianos moved to the neighborhood five years ago from South Carolina.
Moral of the story: If you don’t want police, family and neighbors to check and report your every move, don’t call them with conspiracy theories or paranoid delusions, unless, of course, they are true.
