Haleigh Cummings’s father arrested again, accused of drug possession, violently resisting officer

PUTNAM COUNTY, Fla. — The father of Haleigh Cummings went back to jail on Christmas Day after being released from prison only a few months ago due to being accused of drug possession and violently resisting an officer.

The Putnam County Sheriff’s Office jail records showcased he was arrested and accused of multiple charges including resisting an Officer with violence, battery on an EMT or Officer, and drug possession.

Action News Jax is working on receiving the full arrest report from the Sheriff’s Office.

Ronald Cummings — who is Haleigh’s father — has never been charged in his daughter Haleigh’s disappearance. However, he has served a 12-year sentence for drug trafficking since 2010, as the result of an investigation that began before Haleigh Cummings’ disappearance in 2009.

Ronald Cummings was officially released from prison in October.

History of the Haleigh Cummings Case

Ronald Cummings was never a suspect in his 5-year-old daughter’s disappearance because he was working that night.

Authorities said his daughter was 5 years old and a Kindergarten student at Browning-Pearce Elementary School when she went missing on Feb. 10, 2009.

Her babysitter Misty Croslin, who was 17 at the time, was the last person to see her, the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office said. Croslin reported Haleigh missing, launching a manhunt for the little girl.

Haleigh’s disappearance garnered national attention, but she has never been found.

Her case remains one of Florida’s seven unsolved AMBER Alerts.

In the years since Haleigh’s disappearance, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) has released two age-progression photos of her: one of what she would look like at age 8 and one of what she would look like at age 12.

In 2019, Action News Jax sat down with the lead detective in her case, Capt. Dominic Piscitello with the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office.

“It’s kind of saddening because we haven’t figured it out,” Piscitello said. “This is a place where a little girl went missing from, an innocent child that had no control over anything in her life. She was merely a mechanism of her family and she is potentially gone because of what her family was or wasn’t, they didn’t keep her safe.”

In 2020, Action News Jax talked to Haleigh’s great-grandmother Annette Sykes, who was dying of stage 4 cancer, and her final wish was to find out what happened to Haleigh.

“I don’t have much longer and I want to know where she is and what happened to her before I die. I just want that little bit of peace, that little bit of knowledge. That’s all I’m asking for,” she said.

If you have any information that could help find Haleigh, you’re asked to call 911 or the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office at 1-888-277-8477 or at 386 329-0800.

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