Alicia Navarro’s case has baffled investigators and her household alike (Image: Discovering Alicia / FOX 10)
One morning in September 2019, Jessica Nuñez’s 14-year-old daughter requested if she may keep house from college as she was feeling anxious.
Ms Nuñez thought little of it: the lady was solely weeks into her first time period at a prestigious personal college in Phoenix, Arizona, and her autism meant she struggled with classroom environments to start with.
The next morning, she entered her daughter’s bed room to wake her up and brush her hair – a every day ritual they by no means missed. However she was nowhere to be seen.
Ms Nuñez’s world fell aside as she learn a handwritten word which stated: ‘I ran away. I will likely be again, I swear. I’m sorry. -Alicia.’
The lady, Alicia Navarro, wouldn’t be seen by her mum once more till this week, when she turned up – now aged 18 – at a police station close to the Canadian border in Montana.
‘She is by all accounts protected, she is by all accounts wholesome, and she or he is by all accounts completely satisfied,’ a spokesperson for the native power advised a press convention.
After being reunited together with her daughter, Ms Nuñez celebrated the invention as a ‘miracle’.
Alicia appeared ‘actually completely satisfied’ shortly earlier than she apparently ran away from house (Image: Discovering Alicia)
But it surely stays unclear to what extent the most recent chapter of their story could possibly be described as a contented ending.
Moreover her word, numerous clues recommend Alicia left house willingly.
The again door appeared to have been unlocked from the within, and chairs left in opposition to the inside facet of the backyard fence recommend she needed to scale it unassisted.
As nicely her cellphone and laptop computer, numerous gadgets had been lacking from her bed room which might be of little worth to a possible kidnapper, resembling cosmetics, physique spray and a comic book e book.
Alicia’s mum suspected she had been groomed and lured into working away (Image: Discovering Alicia)
And in a quick snippet of a video name with police from her house city of Glendale, she will be heard insisting ‘no one damage me’ throughout her years away.
However Ms Nuñez and detectives who investigated her disappearance have previouslysaid they think she was groomed or lured away by somebody she met on-line.
Alicia lived together with her mom and stepfather and had just a few mates she frolicked with, however discovered it simpler to socialize on-line, based on Uncovered, the biggest crowdsourced database on chilly circumstances within the US.
She typically performed Minecraft and different on-line video games, utilizing the Discord messaging platform to communicate with folks she met that method.
Alicia discovered the adjustment to a brand new college difficult (Image: Glendale Police Division)
An early signal that she might have been coerced was the very fact she left most of her garments, her favorite belongings and her cellphone and laptop computer chargers.
Kathleen Winn, director of Project25, a nonprofit devoted to fixing circumstances of human trafficking, final yr advised the Arizona Republic that the finds ‘suggests to us that she herself didn’t know she wouldn’t be returning’.
Days after Alicia’s disappearance, Ms Nuñez rushed to a park round 1.5 miles away from the household house after one of many lady’s mates stated she had seen her there.
The mom says she spoke to a number of folks there who stated they’d seen a lady who seemed like Alicia strolling with a person.
Alicia was by no means traced regardless of 1000’s of ideas and potential sightings (Image: Discovering Alicia)
Nonetheless, Alicia didn’t seem like working from something when she approached the police.
She advised officers she was there as a result of ‘she want to get her driver’s licence’, The Anti-Predator Challenge, which has labored with legislation enforcement on the case since 2021, advised The Unbiased.
Most perplexing of all, maybe, is how regular the lady appeared to the one one who knew her greatest once they spent her fateful time off in September 2019 collectively.
‘I took her to get her eyebrows threaded after which we went to a chocolate manufacturing facility. I imply she was actually completely satisfied that day,’ a tearful Ms Nuñez advised USA As we speak. ‘She was laughing, I don’t perceive it.’
Alicia insisted she had not been damage in a video name with police from her house city
Alicia turned as much as the police station by herself, however this doesn’t rule out the chance that she escaped somebody who was conserving her in opposition to her will, police say.
‘From what she acknowledged, this began as a runaway scenario. However in fact, there are extra dynamics at play as we begin to put collectively the puzzle,’ Lieutenant Scott Waite of Glendale’s police division stated throughout a press briefing.
He added: ‘As this investigation unfolds and we get extra clarification on what occurred to her, that’s definitely a risk.
‘However I can’t say there’s something imminent or pending. In any investigation like this, there’s a legal component – if there’s any legal intent behind it, definitely not from her, but when others are concerned.
‘To us, she is a sufferer.’
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