13-Year-Old Missing Ohio Girl Found Alive

Nov. 14, 2010— -- The 13-year-old girl in a group of four people who went missing in Ohio last week was found alive today, but she had been held against her will, police said.

A SWAT team found Sarah Maynard bound and gagged in the basement of a home in Mount Vernon, Ohio, Knox County Sheriff David Barber said at a news conference today.

"We did not want to give him time to harm her, so we did use a tactical team," Barber said.

The man who lives in the house, 30-year-old Matthew Hoffman was arrested and charged with kidnapping, Barber said. More charges are possible, he said.

"We were hopeful of finding more than one" of the missing people in Hoffman's house, Barber said. "But the information we had was that Sarah would definitely be found in that house."

The girl had been "under the control" of Hoffman since Wednesday, when she and her brother were last seen at school, Barber said.

Investigators have determined that Hoffman is not the ex-boyfriend of either Herrmann or Sprang, but they are trying to determine whether there is another connection, the sheriff said.

"At this time, whether he's connected to the family or whether he connected himself to the family ... a lot of that remains to be seen as the investigation continues," Barber said.

He said that investigators have talked to Maynard, but declined to release any details they might have learned from her because the investigation is ongoing.

Maynard was taken to Knox Community Hospital for evaluation, the sheriff said.

"She was being held against her will," Barber said. "She is in good in good condition."

Neighbors described Hoffman as "weird" and "very different."

Dawna Davis, 35, who lives next door to him, told The Associated Press that she told her children to stay indoors when he was out.

"He would sit and listen to us up in a tree. He had a hammock and he would sit there and listen to us," she said. "He was just different. He was very different."

Maynard had disappeared along with her brother, her mother and a friend of her mother on Thursday from Howard, a small town in central Ohio.