Girl in father-daughter holdup in Ellensburg safe in California

Police in Northern California say the 9-year-old girl involved in an Ellensburg-area convenience-store robbery is safe there and will be flown back to Washington state to be joined with her mother.

Fortuna Police Lt. Bill Dobberstein says the girl's father, Robert Daniel Webb, 42, of Everett, escaped a police chase and is still at large

Dobberstein says Webb stopped at the home of an acquaintance in Fortuna on Wednesday night and the acquaintance called police because Webb appeared to be driving drunk.

Officers initially investigated the call as a suspected kidnapping, said Fortuna Detective Aaron Starcher, but they determined through the girl and a call to her mother, Susan Webb, that she had not been abducted.

When officers tried to detain Robert Webb on a national warrant for the robbery, Webb sped away without the girl, Starcher said.

Webb is accused of robbing an ampm minimart near Ellensburg of $200 early Tuesday while his daughter watched.

The girl, who was unhurt, was taken into protective custody and then placed with acquaintances in the area until her flight to Washington, Starcher said.

"When I talked to her, she seemed to be in good spirits," Starcher said.

Fortuna officers noticed open alcohol containers and smelled alcohol on Webb's breath when they approached him in his car, the detective said.

When officers tried to get him to leave the car to arrest him, Webb drove away, Starcher said.

Officers got in their patrol cars and pursued Webb but weren't able to locate him.

A witness told police of seeing a car traveling at high speed, passing through stop lights and signs, Starcher said.

The car was on Highway 101, headed toward Eureka, Calif., Starcher said.

Webb pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of malicious mischief to property in 2007 in Yakima Municipal Court and was sentenced to 10 days in jail.

Webb has been unemployed for several months from his career in the eyeglass field, Kittitas County Undersheriff Clay Myers said.

Information from the Yakima Herald-Republic is included in this story.