A bewildering kidnapping case involving a 22-year-old was reported in Arkansas on Nov. 17. The authorities received a frantic call from the victim, who suffers from mental and physical disabilities. She dialed 911, fearing for her life after two masked men entered her home. They took her to a field and tried to tie her to a tree twice, after she attempted to flee from their clutches the first time. However, she managed to free herself from their hold before calling the cops.
Shockingly, the police arrived at the crime scene and discovered a disturbing truth behind the kidnapping call. It was revealed that the woman’s own mother and primary caregiver was the one who staged her daughter’s kidnapping. The sole reason for such reckless behavior was to scare the latter. As per a 5News report, the mother, identified as Tamara Hanby, enlisted her in-home nursing assistant, Shannon Yvonne Childers, to carry out the fake plan. The plot had always been to allegedly scare her daughter, but not put her at any risk.
The investigating team learned that the in-home nursing assistant, Shannon, had been informed of the plan. Thus, she hired two individuals, David Q. Quach and Nico Austria, to join in the faux drama and play the kidnappers. According to the woman’s mother, she wanted to teach her daughter a lesson for speaking to strangers online.
Tamara, a.k.a. Tammi, was skeptical that her daughter was speaking to unsolicited strangers online, including one who had pretended to be popular country singer Luke Bryan. As per her plan, she wanted someone to pretend to be linked to the music artist and contact her daughter, promising a meet-up with Luke. Then the person was supposed to pick the 22-year-old from her home, lure her into a field, and tie her to a tree, while making horrendous demands of securing money from her.
In Oct a 22-year-old woman with intellectual disabilities was kidnapped in Arkansas
All staged by her adoptive mother, Tammi Hamby & home nursing assistant Childers who recruited 2 men to teach her to be careful online
Hamby is A Christian mom who tried to ban LGBTQ books pic.twitter.com/SRg5cQ4nw7
— Popitics (@Popitics1) December 7, 2025
If the plan had gone as intended, Tamara would have swept into the scene and saved her daughter from the fake goons attempting to kidnap her. But things did not go as planned, with her daughter calling the cops the minute she escaped. As a result, Tamara has decided to turn herself in. The warrant details the exact play-by-play of how the incident unfolded, including that the mother had been watching the ordeal until her daughter tried to run back to their home.
The Crawford County Sheriff’s office deputy said, “[Hamby’s daughter] was in fear for her life and clung tightly to a teddy bear the entirety of my speaking with her during her interview.”
Tamara, who was employed by the Crawford County Library Board, resigned from her position on Nov. 24, following the incident. Her husband has defended his wife’s ordeal as justified, since all they wanted was to protect their daughter. As per Jeffrey Hanby, their daughter almost got embroiled in a predatory relationship with a stranger online, who pretended to be a country singer.
He said, “The predator developed a relationship with her, and he said he was Luke Bryan, the singer. And my daughter adores him. So, over the last six months, he’s developed somewhat of a trauma bond, now that we’ve been able to see the chats and the messages, and he was attempting to obtain her or get her.”
The stranger with whom their daughter spoke regularly was later traced through online records as a person in Nigeria. If Tamara Hanby had not intervened, the parents were sure that the culprit would have actually taken away their daughter for real. Jeffrey added, “We tried everything, and she has not stopped communicating with him, and he was going to get her. He was going to take her. And so, my wife, without my knowledge, with her aide and a couple of their friends, tried to do an intervention.”
Nonetheless, he admitted that the plot devised by his wife was a little too far-fetched, adding that he had no idea what she had planned to do. As per court records, Tamara has been charged with kidnapping, false imprisonment, abuse of an endangered adult or impaired person, battery, and terroristic threatening over the case.
