San Fernando Valley : Girl Safe, Father Held After 2 Nights in Forest

A 5-year-old girl was returned to her mother Thursday, two days after the girl’s distraught father took her and a rifle into the vast Los Padres National Forest.

Daniel Beverly, 33, disappeared with his 5-year-old daughter, Danielle, from their trailer park home in Castaic on Tuesday night. Before leaving, Beverly bound his wife, Karen, with duct tape and grabbed his high-powered deer-hunting rifle, investigators said.

Authorities in Ventura County were notified after Karen Beverly told deputies her husband might have driven their daughter into the Los Padres forest, where he often spent weekends hunting.

More than 50 sheriff’s deputies from Los Angeles and Ventura counties searched for the father and daughter. On Thursday, acting on a tip that the father was staying in a trailer on a rancher’s property, deputies landed their helicopter out of view half a mile from the trailer and hiked in with guns drawn.

Beverly came out of his makeshift living quarters without his rifle and surrendered, deputies said. Danielle, wearing an oversized California Angels T-shirt, ran 50 yards to the safety of the helicopter.

She was reunited with her mother and they were flown to the Santa Clarita sheriff’s station. David Beverly, handcuffed, was flown separately to Santa Clarita and booked on a charge of false imprisonment. He was being held in lieu of $45,000 bail.