Philly girl taken from school found outside city

A 5-year-old girl who was taken from a Philadelphia school was found safe Tuesday morning just outside the city, police said.

Upper Darby police Superintendent Michael Chitwood said a man walking down the street around 4:40 a.m. heard cries for help and found Nailla Robinson hiding under a jungle gym in a park, wearing only a T-shirt.She’s been taken to the hospital to be checked out, Chitwood said, but is expected to be OK.

The investigation was continuing, Chitwood said, and police are continuing to search for the girl’s abductor.

Police said Nailla Robinson was taken Monday morning from the Bryant School. Authorities released surveillance video showing a woman wearing a full-length, black Muslim garment, her face covered by a black veil, taking the girl out of the school. Lt. John Walker told the Philadelphia Daily News the woman introduced herself as “Tiffany,” but her signature in the school visitor log was illegible.

Nailla’s mother had appeared on local media Monday night, tearfully pleading for her safe return, and explaining how she also wears the traditional chador and niqab.

School district officials said that allowing the girl to leave school with an unknown adult was a “serious break in procedure.” District spokesman Fernando Gallard said the woman didn’t wait at the school’s front office as is district policy but went to her classroom and told a teacher that the child had already been “checked out” of school.

Police discovered that the girl was missing later that afternoon, when a caretaker from the child’s after-school program came to pick her up.