Last week I wrote about a plane that turned around due to a child being illegally taken out of the country.

When I first heard about the story there weren’t a lot of details about what had happened. I came across an article from the Washington Post which filled in some of the gaps and offered a better explanation of the situation.

Just a refresher- A United Airlines flight flying direct from Washington to Beijing turned around hours into the flight at the request of the FBI due to a parental kidnapping.

The mother, Wenjing Liu “was arrested Thursday under probable cause of international parental kidnapping”. She tried to knowingly and unlawfully “remove her son from the United States with intent to obstruct the lawful exercise of parental rights”.

The father called authorities who contacted the FBI about the kidnapping and after researching the custody agreement requested that United turn the flight around.

After the flight landed the mother was taken into custody and the child went home with his father.

Liu is a Chinese citizen and her son is a dual citizen of China & the US. The boy was born in 2010 and the parents got divorced in 2013, having joint legal custody of the child. The custody order states that neither parent could travel outside the US without notarized consent of the other parent.

According to the Post Liu e-mailed the father that they were flying to China since her grandmother was dying. The father said he could not go due to school. The mother wrote back that the tickets were booked and they were leaving immediately.

While Liu said she had just found out about her grandmother’s health issues, a one-way flight was booked on August 27.

Talk about a scary situation…

It makes me wonder if this kind of situation has happened other times.

Find out more in the Washington Post article here.