Police have arrested the father of a nine-year-old girl who was found dead hours after he claimed his daughter had been abducted.
Melina Frattolin was reported missing on Saturday after her father Luciano Frattolin told New York State Police (NYSP) he thought his daughter had been kidnapped by someone in a white van.
But records are now said to show that Frattolin, a 45-year-old coffee entrepreneur, is being held in Essex County Jail in upstate New York.
It is unclear if any charges have been filed, with police set to provide a further update Monday morning.
The distressing development comes after police issued a heartbreaking update saying ‘there is no indication that an abduction occurred’ and the little girl had been found dead in the town of Ticonderoga.
NYSP had issued an ‘amber alert’ on Saturday as a desperate search was launched for Melina, with cops saying at the time that she was believed to be in imminent danger.
Tragically, the girl’s body was found yesterday after extensive searches, with investigators saying there was no indication that she was abducted and that there was ‘no threat to the public’.
Cops said that ‘as the case progressed, law enforcement identified inconsistencies in the father’s account of events and the timeline he provided.’
The nine-year-old girl was found dead less than 24 hours after her father claimed she had been abducted in a white van. (Pictured: Melina Frattolin with her father Luciano, 45)
New York State Police (NYSP) issued an ‘amber alert’ on Saturday for Melina Frattolin (pictured) after Luciano Frattolin, 45, told them he thought his daughter had been kidnapped
Luciano Frattolin (pictured), 45, told police he thought his daughter had been kidnapped, but they identified ‘inconsistencies’ in his story and she was later found dead
She was located in Ticonderoga, New York, around 45 miles south of where her father said she had last been seen.
Lake George, the spot where he said he last saw her, is a small waterside town in the Adirondack region of upstate New York around 60 miles north of Albany.
Frattolin was described as five feet tall, weighing 100 pounds and being of Indian descent with brown hair and brown eyes.
Police said that both she and her father are Canadian residents.
Frattolin is the founder of an organic coffee brand called Gambella, according to the product’s website.
‘Luciano Frattolin is an experienced entrepreneur with a proven track record of building diverse, high-performance businesses,’ the website reads.
On Sunday afternoon police issued an update saying ‘there is no indication that an abduction occurred’ and the little girl had been found dead. (Pictured: Melina with her father)
Police said both Melina Frattolin and her father Luciano are Canadian residents
Lake George, where the girl was last seen, is a small waterside town in the Adirondack region of upstate New York around 60 miles north of Albany
‘With a background in the humanities and social sciences, his formal education, together with his pragmatic understanding about the complexities of life, motivates him to maintain an understanding of the world grounded in a distinct cross-cultural ethos.
‘The son of an Ethiopian mother and an Italian father, Luciano was born in the small, remote village of Gambella.
‘With a childhood spent running between rows of crimson coffee buds on the Ethiopian family plantation, and the neoclassical architecture of his father’s Milano, his vision of the world and his pursuits within, reflect these hyphenated cultures.’
