Mother Charged in Connection with Missing Girl

Cobb Police arrested and charged Keyonna Grant of Mableton with contributing to the delinquency of a minor resulting in serious injury, a misdemeanor, after her 5-year-old daughter, Taniya Gilbert, went missing on Friday around 11:30 p.m.

Taniya was returned safely at 7:25 a.m. on Saturday by a man who discovered the girl sleeping soundly in his truck.

According to Sgt. Dana Pierce, spokesman for the Cobb County Police, Grant instructed Taniya to go to sleep in the truck while she returned to a gathering of friends and family at Whisperwood Apartments in Austell.

After friends and family searched the complex for the girl, someone called 911 around 1:40 a.m. and police were prepared to launch a full search to find Taniya.

Pierce said Grant was "uncooperative" and "unresponsive" as police tried to find out more details about the girl.

Approximately 90 members of various law enforcement agencies had gathered at the Cobb police and fire substation on Factory Shoals Road in Austell to launch a full-scale search operation.

However, just as they began to leave to fulfill their various tasks in hopes of finding Taniya, Capt. Jeff Adcock of Precinct 2 received a call that the girl was found safely in the bed of a truck.

Taniya, along with Grant's two other children–a 7-year-old boy and a 2-year-old girl, were sent to state protective services. However, a judge released the three children into the custody of their biological father soon after, Pierce explained.

Grant, who was first arrested on Sept. 1, remains in Cobb County Jail.