By rssfeeds-admin Chris Kierner called police before 6 a.m. Wednesday morning. He’d woken up to discover his daughter, Glorianna, had left their home.
Glorianna is nonverbal and has a genetic disorder. Kierner said Glorianna doesn’t have the wherewithal to even look before crossing the road. He immediately called 911, fearing the worst.
”I just don’t know what she’s going to do,” Kierner said. “Is somebody going to grab her, is she going to get hit by a car, is she going to get attacked by a dog? You just don’t know.”
Kierner said IMPD quickly responded. Body camera video from when officers arrived at Kierner’s home shows the responding officer telling Kierner they had a drone and multiple patrolmen already out searching.
“Those guys really put me at ease,” Kierner said. “They said, ‘Don’t worry. We’ll find her.’ And that helped, that helped because I was falling apart.”
Not long after, a drone pilot spotted a person on the move in the neighborhood. Responding officer Mitch Hubner found Glorianna walking in the street. Body cam video showed their initial interaction.
”Hi there,” Hubner said. “Did you walk away from home?”
Hubner spoke with Glorianna for a few moments before she felt comfortable to get in his squad car and warm up.
”I try to treat other people’s families like my own,” Hubner said. “I want, if my kids were to walk out of the house, I would hope a police officer would treat them with the same dignity and respect and compassion that they need to get them home safely.”
Being non-verbal, Glorianna has problems communicating. Kierner said Glorianna knows American Sign Language but can’t do all of the movements. Luckily, Hubner learned ASL in high school and college, and recognized the signs Glorianna was making.
“She was telling me she was walking,” Hubner said. “She went for a walk, so I was able to sign back to her yes, a walk.”
Body camera video from inside Hubner’s squad car shows the interaction. Hubner will be the first to admit, he’s not fluent in ASL, but he knows enough to communicate.
”It’s easier for me to pick up on what they’re signing, than it is for me to put signs back out to them,” Hubner said. “Luckily, our person was nonverbal, but she could hear me, so I was able to see what she was signing and pick up on certain cues and then I was able to just talk back to her. It was more of building the trust, less of having a full-on conversation.”
Hubner said he noticed Glorianna relax in his backseat as she realized he could understand her.
”Just like anybody, if you can’t talk to somebody, how can you trust them, right?” Hubner said. “But she was able to talk to me.”
Hubner, Glorianna and her dad all reunited at IMPD East District on Thursday.
Kierner said it felt like a second chance at life when IMPD found his daughter.
”We don’t go to bed at night without praying for them, all of them are heroes,” Kierner said.
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