Michigan police found a family of four that were reported missing on October 16 after the father displayed what authorities described as “paranoid behaviors” during a 911 response to the home last weekend.

The Fremont Police Department released a statement on Sunday thanking everyone for helping them locate the family. The department said they found the Cirigliano family in Wisconsin.

Police made the statement after confirming a family sighting in Wisconsin earlier this week. However, authorities said they did not know where the family might have been heading.

According to the police, the family of four, including the father, 51-year-old Anthony John Cirigliano, his wife, 51-year-old Suzette Lee Cirigliano, and their two sons, Brandon Michael and Noah Alexander Cirigliano, 19 and 15, suddenly left their Fremont home on October 16. The two teenagers are both autistic.

The family turned all their cell phones off and left Suzette’s elderly mother, who has dementia and needs a full-time caregiver, and their pets behind. This was very odd and other family members became concerned. Neighbors found the elderly grandmother wandering about the neighborhood and disoriented on October 17, a day after the family disappeared.

Tim Rodwell, the Fremont Police Chief, said that the grandmother was being cared for by other family members.

Before they found the missing family, Chief Rodwell had received calls from concerned  family relatives, especially because no member of the Cirigliano family had been reachable, and they had not been in contact with anybody.

After the police announced their search for the missing family and gave out descriptions and pictures, they received numerous tips about sightings, which included a successful tip that the family had been spotted at a Gulliver gas station on October 17. The gas station manager called authorities and told them she believed she had seen the family they were looking for at the gas station, and the police confirmed the sighting through a surveillance video.

Chief Rodwell said the footage recorded the four of them buying food and filling up their minivan’s tank with gas just before 11 am and that there was nothing to suggest where the family might have been traveling to.

Why were family and police so concerned about this family who seemed to be taking a private family-time road trip?

The family was reported missing after police responded to a 911 call from the Cirigliano family home just after midnight on October 16. Mr. Cirigliano had called 911 and started telling the police that he had vital information about the terrorist attacks that happened on September 11, 2001.

What specifically concerned the cops was the dad’s statement: “People want to erase me from the face of the Earth.” He said that his family needed protection from the police.

Police who spoke to him grew concerned about his mental health, and they talked to his wife and the two boys to check on them and make sure they were okay.

No hospital records show Cirigliano had any mental health issues. When they investigated the sudden disappearance, the police did not find signs of struggle, violence, or foul play in the house.

Everyone who knew Cirigliano described him as a loving dad and a family-oriented person. Authorities and the family’s neighbors said that the disappearance of the Cirigliano family was uncharacteristic as the family spent a lot of time in the house and did not travel far whenever they left home.

According to Chief Rodwell, the Ciriglianos moved to the neighborhood five years ago from South Carolina.

Moral of the story: If you don’t want police, family and neighbors to check and report your every move, don’t call them with conspiracy theories or paranoid delusions, unless, of course, they are true.