HOT SPRINGS -- Hot Springs Mayor Ruth Carney said late Thursday that her daughter-in-law, actress Tiffany Thornton, did not abduct her own children -- countering an online article saying a police report on the matter had been filed by her son.
"My daughter-in-law was here, and he knew exactly where she was," Carney said of her son, Chris. "I brought her back with me from California because she had the two babies and wanted to go visit her parents in Texas but couldn't do it by herself with the two babies," Carney said.
The celebrity gossip and entertainment news website TMZ reported late Thursday that Carney's son had filed a "child stealing report" with the Los Angeles Police Department against his wife.
A Los Angeles police spokesman told The Sentinel-Record that they had no information on an incident of that nature.
The TMZ report states Chris Carney told police that he thinks Thornton, who starred on the Disney show Sonny With a Chance, suffers from postpartum depression. Thornton gave birth to the couple's second son on March 1. Their oldest son is 20 months old.
Ruth Carney, who announced on St. Patrick's Day that she was going to seek re-election as mayor, said she brought Thornton and the children back to Hot Springs for a two-week vacation, and that while they were there, her son and daughter-in-law "got into all this back-and-forth stuff."
"He was a recovering alcoholic that relapsed. He is in the middle of alcohol. He was in Teen Challenge for almost two years but went back to LA and started the same lifestyle he had before, and it's killing him," she said.
The mayor said her daughter-in-law and grandchildren are now with her parents and family in Texas.
"The plan was for her to go visit them and then go back [to LA]. But he's gotten progressively worse. He was bad when we were out there, but he's just drinking all the time," she said.
"We're not in Mexico in some hotel. He knew exactly where she was and where she is now.
"Alcoholism is not a fun thing. It's like hell on earth with him. He's wonderful when he's not drinking, but then he started drinking all the time, and it's too much," she said.
"She [Thornton] was not being physically abused, but emotionally and mentally, and just having had a baby ... I said she needed to go home with me, and she did," the mayor said.
State Desk on 05/23/2014