SARPY COUNTY, NE (NBC 26) — The Arkansas man who was arrested for kidnapping a pregnant Wisconsin teenager pleaded not guilty Friday to a pair of misdemeanor charges in Nebraska.
Gary Day, 40, is facing counts of contributing to the delinquency of a child and giving a fake name [false reporting] in Nebraska.
He is scheduled to appear again at the Sarpy County Courthouse later this afternoon. A pretrial is also scheduled for June 5.
A multi-state AMBER Alert went out for 17-year-old Sophia Franklin of Beaver Dam in February.
Early Thursday morning, the Beaver Dam Police Department said Sarpy County sheriff's deputies responded to a tip late Wednesday at a Love's Travel Stop. After talking to two witnesses, deputies confirmed Day's and Sophia's identities.
Police say the investigation revealed felony warrants for Day’s arrest on charges of child abduction and enticement. Those charges are filed in Dodge County.
Deputies took Sophia to a secure facility, and has since been reunited with her family.
Sophia had been missing from her family’s Beaver Dam home since Feb. 2. At the time of the AMBER Alert, she was 16 and three months pregnant. Authorities say Day is the father of her unborn child.
The alert was issued in Wisconsin and later expanded to Missouri and Arkansas, where Day lives. Before it was issued, authorities say Sophia spent over four months with Day in Arkansas while her parents thought she was staying with a friend in town and working.
Leah Franklin, Sophia's mother, said the focus now is on getting Sophia, who is five months pregnant, back to where she needs to be, both mentally and physically.
