A missing toddler who became the object of an intensive search last night in Coraopolis was found safe with an aunt who did not tell a sitter she'd picked up the child.

Police began searching for 3-year-old Lily Brown at about 5:15 p.m. after her baby sitter told them she believed the girl had wandered away. When police arrived at the sitter's home in the 700 block of Hiland Avenue, they said a friend of the sitter's son told them he'd seen Lily get into a silver car but did not know who was driving it.

That prompted police to handle the case as a suspected abduction. They called in state police, officers from departments in several neighboring communities and firefighters to assist with a search.

Trained dogs also were summoned to sniff the girl's coat and seek her scent elsewhere. More than 100 people, including neighbors with flashlights, also took to the streets in the dark after learning Lily was missing through telephone calls placed by a computer-alert system.

They joined in a search made urgent by the knowledge that Lily was not wearing a coat in the cold and freezing rain.

More than two hours passed, police said, before they learned that the girl's aunt, Georgette Blatz, had picked her up at the sitter's house but did not tell the sitter she was leaving with the girl. By then, Georgette Blatz had already returned Lily to her mother, Henrietta Blatz, who contacted police after hearing a search was under way.

"It was very frustrating for us," said Coraopolis Police Chief Alan DeRusso. "We had no choice [but] to treat this as an abduction."

State police did not issue an Amber Alert because the case did not meet criteria for an alert, Chief DeRusso said.