Pair arrested after boy found following Amber Alert

Two Jacksonville women were arrested Friday in connection with an Amber Alert issued after an Orange Park child was seen getting into a car in the Spencer's Plantation community, according to the Clay County Sheriff's Office.

Vachastity Tahivy Raqkeil Christian, 25, of Bunker Hill Boulevard, and Ondreja Olyvia Chaniece Ciprian, 23, of Necia Drive, were being held on charges of interfering with the custody of a child and giving false information to a police officer regarding a missing person, according to Clay County Jail records.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement's Amber Alert said 10-year-old Cedric Barnes was last seen about 2:50 p.m. near the 2000 block of Spencer Plantation Boulevard in Orange Park as he walked home from Argyle Elementary School with friends. What witnesses described as a gray former police car pulled up to the child, and he got in.

Deputies searched for known relatives and went to a home on Necia Drive South in Jacksonville, the Sheriff's Office said. They saw a shirt hanging on a fence, the same kind of clothing the boy was seen wearing at school that day, the Sheriff's Office. The child was found safe in a back bedroom, then taken to Orange Park Medical Center for a check-up and released to his grandmother, the reports said.

The Sheriff's Office said the child was taken from his mother and father's home in February, and placed by the Florida Department of Children and Families in his grandmother's custody. The arrest reports say Ciprian had "enticed the victim to come live with her" in recent weeks without the grandmother's knowledge, and had no legal parental rights.

Dan Scanlan: (904) 359-4549