On Monday, Cindy McCain told Arizona's KTAR radio station that she had prevented a human trafficking incident at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. On Wednesday, Phoenix police say she didn't.
"I came in from a trip I’d been on and I spotted — it looked odd — it was a woman of a different ethnicity than the child, this little toddler she had, and something didn't click with me," McCain told KTAR's Mac & Gayos. "I went over to the police and told them what I saw, and they went over and questioned her, and, by God, she was trafficking that kid." She added that the woman was "waiting for the guy who bought the child to get off an airplane."
Phoenix Police Sgt. Armando Carbajal told KTAR on Wednesday that officers, at McCain's request, did conduct a welfare check on a child at the airport, but they found "no evidence of criminal conduct or child endangerment." McCain walked back her story on Twitter Wednesday afternoon.
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McCain — who, as journalist Marcy Wheeler points out, has an adopted daughter of a different ethnicity — is co-chair of the Arizona governor's Human Trafficking Council and serves on the McCain Institute's Human Trafficking Advisory Council.
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