Stepdad who pleaded on TV for safe return of missing 14-year-old Tennessee girl arrested hours after she's found in Wisconsin

Missing 14-year-old Tennessee teen who was last seen 18 days ago was found on Thursday and the police, on the same day, charged the missing girl's stepfather who was recently seen on TV pleading for her safe return.

Savannah Leigh Pruitt, of Madisonville, was in “good health” after she was recovered from Wisconsin. In a news conference, Monroe County Sheriff Tommy Jones said, “She is safe, she is in custody, and that’s the best outcome for the situation.” 41-year-old Randall Lee Pruitt was then arrested and is being held without bond.

Randall is being held at the Monroe County Jail on a single criminal charge related to the case, reports a local Knoxville TV station. However, the police authorities did not reveal what led the teen to Wisconsin, although they did say that she was believed to have been “fleeing from a bad home situation.”

The cops had been looking for the missing teenager in four different states after she was last seen at her home on the night of January 13. The young girl's mother, Christina Pruitt, told authorities that she last saw her daughter heading to bed between 11 and 11:30 pm.

Later, between 5:15 am. and 5:30 am., the young girl's two cell phones pinged in the Corbin, Kentucky, area, which was nearly 140 miles from her hometown as revealed by Monroe County Sheriff’s Office detectives at an earlier press conference.

“It’s like having your soul ripped out of your body,” Randall said when he had joined Savannah’s mother in pleading for the teen’s safe return. “You can’t think, you can’t eat, you can’t sleep, you can’t rest — life has just ceased for us since she left.”

“We don’t believe at this time he has any connection to her running away or missing,” Jones said at the time. The family had newly moved back to Madisonville in late December from Lawrenceville, Georgia, where they had lived for many years.