Mom and infant found safe after disappearing under suspicious circumstances

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. -    The ex-girlfriend of Stanislav Petrov, the man seen on video being beaten by Alameda County Sheriff’s deputies, has been found less than 24 hours after she was reported missing.  

   23-year-old Dana Rinta walked into the Northern District police station on Fillmore street shortly before 7 o’clock Saturday night to inform officers that she was not missing, despite reports that no one had seen her in at least two weeks.

   Earlier in the day, police issued a statement saying that Rinta had vanished under suspicious circumstances.  

   When reached by phone at her home in the Central Valley, Rinta’s mother, Sharon Rinta, who reported her daughter missing on Friday, told KTVU, “Thank you for putting it out there, I’m relieved she’s been found.”

   In Visitacion Valley, where the FBI arrested Petrov and three others on Friday and where a man had been shot earlier in the day, a neighbor who did not want to share his name told KTVU that Rinta had been staying with Petrov at the house.  

“She was sleeping downstairs in the garage with the little girl,” the neighbor said.  “She came for a couple days and she stayed for I think a month.  Then one day the guy put all of her stuff outside.  She gotta go.”

   29-year-old Petrov suffered multiple injuries in the beating last year by deputies and is moving forward with a civil lawsuit against Alameda County.  San Francisco’s District Attorney George Gascon has not yet filed charges against the deputies.

   Petrov has his own legal troubles.  Just before the videotaped beating, he’s accused of leading deputies on a high speed chase, and ramming two patrol cars. 

   The federal charges against him are expected to be revealed when Petrov is arraigned in federal court in San Francisco on Monday.