Sherri Papini was spotted for the first time in public outside her Redding, California, home with her family on Saturday, January 7, two months after her abduction.
The 34-year-old was photographed stepping outside the home she shares with husband Keith Papini and their two young children, son Tyler, 4, and daughter Violet, 2. Sherri, whose hair was reportedly cut off by her captors, hid her scalp beneath a baseball cap and the hood of her white jacket. The photos show the mom of two holding a red dish in one hand and a water bottle in the other.
As previously reported, Sherri was found beaten and chained on the side of a road in Yolo County, California, around 4:30 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day, after her mysterious disappearance captured the nation’s attention. Keith reported his spouse missing when she didn’t return home following a jog November 2. Sherri was supposed to pick up their kids from daycare that day but did not, and Keith said he later found her headphones by the side of the road when he began searching for her.
During a December 2 interview with 20/20, Keith recounted Sherri’s horrifying experience in an interview with ABC’s Matt Gutman, saying she had been chained before fleeing to safety.
“I thought about her being there, screaming my name. She was bound. She had a chain around her waist. She had a bag over her head. Her left hand was in the vehicle chained to something. She was chained anytime she was in a vehicle,” he shared. “They opened the door — she doesn’t know, because she had a bag over her head. They cut something to free [a] restraint that was holding her into the vehicle and then kind of pushed her out of the vehicle, and she at this point has no idea where she’s at. She ran to the freeway.”
Keith also told Gutman about his wife’s alarming physical condition following her escape from her alleged abductors, who Sherri described to police as being two Hispanic women.
According to Keith, Sherri tried to flag down help by the highway in the early hours of Thanksgiving morning after being set free. “She screamed so much, she said she’s coughing up blood from the screaming, trying to get somebody to stop,” he said. “And again, just another sign of how my wife is, she’s so wonderful, how she’s like, ‘Well, maybe people aren’t stopping because I have a chain, it looks like I broke out of prison.’ So she tried to tuck in her chain under her clothes.”
Authorities are looking for the two women as the investigation continues. So far, no arrests have been made.
