RICHVILLE, N.Y. (AP) – The Amish are famous for their barn raisings, when an entire community turns out to help a neighbor.
In northern New York, members of an extended Amish family plan to hold a “garage raising” for the couple who returned two kidnapped Amish girls to their home.
Jeffrey and Pamela Stinson tell the Watertown Daily Times (http://bit.ly/1l8vUYL ) that the garage at their home in St. Lawrence County recently burned down while they were on vacation in Maine. The fire was believed to have been started by a stray cat knocking over a battery jumpstart box inside.
Earlier this month, the Stinsons were shocked when two Amish girls knocked on the front door of their home in Richville, about 15 miles from where police say the girls, ages 7 and 12, were abducted while tending to their family’s roadside farm stand in Oswegatchie, on the Canadian border.
The Stinsons said the girls were cold, wet and so hungry that they quickly consumed a watermelon Jeffrey had just picked from the family’s garden. The girls then asked to be driven to their home. After a brief discussion with his wife on how to proceed, Stinson decided it was best to take them home rather than call police.