When the Prichard Police Department sent out an Amber Alert early Friday morning after two children were abducted during a carjacking, the offers of help came pouring in.

The FBI, U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Marshals and other law enforcement agencies offered assistance.

Even Gov. Kay Ivey’s office contacted Prichard police offering use of the governor’s helicopter in searching for the carjacked truck and the two children.

“Any time there’s an Amber Alert, we have everybody calling us,” said Prichard police Sgt. Bart Andrews. “The FBI, U.S. Marshals, Secret Service, ALEA — everyone calls and wants to know what they can.”

The carjacking occurred late Thursday night at a Love’s truck stop along the Interstate 65 service road in Prichard.

Andrews said the two children — ages 4 and 3 — were traveling with their parents in a 1999 Ford F-250 truck with a Tennessee license plate pulling a trailer full of new appliances.

The family is from the New England area and the parents were delivering the equipment in the trailer to the Mobile area.

Multiple suspects — two of them brandishing firearms — approached the family and carjacked the truck and trailer, taking the two children with them, police said.

Andrews said the mother begged the suspects to leave the children, but instead they became “more aggressive and violent” towards the mother.

“They sexually assaulted her because they patted her down, searched for money in her bra, things like that,” Andrews said.

By 5:30 a.m. Friday, the truck had been found, with the two children inside, appearing uninjured.

The trailer was gone, but located about three hours later, Andrews said. The trailer’s contents were gone.

There are no immediate suspects, Andrews said, other than the descriptions provided by the victims.

Because the carjacking involved interstate commerce, the FBI has taken over the case, Andrews said, and already has a forensics team in route to the crime scene.

The suspects, if caught and convicted, face up to 15 years in federal prison.

Andrews said he and his department are grateful for the assistance provided by the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA), the FBI and concerned citizens who called in with information, as well as the assistance offered by other agencies.

Andrews also said he is glad the FBI is investigating.

“I hope (the suspects) are scared to death,” Andrews said. “They’re going to get caught.”