Two Missouri women sent fear through a community after calling police on March 30, 2026, to report a stolen vehicle and an abducted child. Ashley Collins and Kayla Williams contacted St. Louis County Police to report a 2020 Jeep Renegade stolen with a 5-year-old girl inside named Aleise Dawson. Police immediately took the situation seriously and activated an Amber Alert to find the little girl as quickly as possible. The women said Aleise was wearing a flower-power shirt and blue jeans. As time went on, the women’s story started to fall apart, and police wanted the truth.
Police received a call about a stolen vehicle early in the morning.
St. Louis County Police responded to an apartment complex in the 8900 block of New Hampshire Avenue in Affton just before 8 a.m., according to a news release. Collins reportedly told police someone stole her car with a 5-year-old child inside. Authorities began searching for the vehicle and the child immediately. They found the Jeep just a few blocks away at the Madaford Gardens Apartment Complex, but there was no sign of Aleise.
Many wondered what the heck happened to the child.
Vera Clay, public information supervisor with St. Louis County Police, held a news conference at the site of the reported abduction, and things didn’t seem right to viewers. Clay described Aleise as “a little something,” but they did not have a photo of the child. The story raised plenty of suspicion.
“So someone abducted the only child in America that nobody has a picture of?” someone commented on the Fox 2 news conference feed. “Something seems off about this,” another person added.
Police interviewed the women, and things got even stranger.
Per the St. Louis County Police news release, Collins and Williams are a couple and told police they lived with Aleise. Williams told police she put the child in Collins’ car and ran back inside. When she returned a short time later, she claimed the Jeep and the child had disappeared. Strangely, Collins reportedly told police she didn’t call 911 right away. Instead, she drove Williams to work first.
“Ashley called her bank to see if they could locate her car using GPS, since the bank was financing the car. She eventually called 911,” police explained in the news release.
After about five hours of investigating, Collins and Williams reportedly admitted the car was stolen, but one major part of their story was fabricated: There was no child in the car, and Aleise was a figment of their imagination.
The women both face charges.
St. Louis County Police arrested Collins and Williams. Each faces a charge of making a false report. Collins faces an additional charge of misusing 911. A judge set their bond at $10,000 cash only, per the police news release.
“While we are extremely grateful that there is no child in danger, we want to be very clear — we will use all available resources to ensure our community members, especially the most vulnerable among us, are safe,” St. Louis County Police Lt. Col. Jerry Lohr said during a news conference.
Lohr added he has no idea why Collins and Williams made up the child’s existence.
“I don’t know if it was a sense of panic, I don’t know if the individual thought that they would get more response to the fact that their vehicle was stolen. I can’t speak to the motivation of the individual,” he said during the news conference.
Some people just aren’t very bright. Thinking that no one is going to realize you made up an entire person is just ludicrous.
