Mum of teenager who vanished for four years urges people to stop visiting her home in ‘dangerous’ search for answers
31 July 2023, 08:08 | Updated: 3 August 2023, 07:43
The mother of a missing 18-year-old girl who walked into a police station after disappearing for four years has urged people to stop turning up at her home in what she has described as a 'dangerous' search for answers.
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Jessica Nuñez, Alicia Navarro's mother, issued a social media video where she urged people to keep their distance.
“I’m making this video to let everybody know how much I appreciate the support you have given Alicia over the last four years.
“I can’t even put into words the amount of gratitude I have for you all.
“But now that we know Alicia is alive, I have to ask one more favour. I know you want answers and I do too.
“But the public search for answers has taken a turn for the dangerous.
“I have been harassed, my family has been attacked over the internet.
“The public has gone from trying to help Alicia… to showing up to her house and putting her safety in jeopardy.
“I beg you, no more TikTok’s, no more reaching out to Alicia with your speculations, or your questions or assumptions.
“This is not a move, this is our life, this is my daughter.
“I love her more than anything in the world and I think I have shown you that. My job has always been to protect her.
“There is an ongoing investigation and I’m begging you to move on.”
It comes after neighbours claimed they heard Alicia arguing with a man and threatening to "go back".
Neighbours said Alicia Navarro was shouting with a man in their flat in Havre, Montana, some 2,000 miles from her family's home in Glendale, Arizona that she fled from.
They heard the argument on Saturday last week - the day before she walked into the police station to identify herself.
"I was here the other day and I heard them yelling. She did say, 'I will go back.' But that's all I heard," neighbour Garrett Smith, 22, told The New York Post.
He had seen her about 30 times in the town, and saw her holding hands with a man. The pair seemed shy and "closed-off".
The man seemed to start avoiding Smith after he told him he was from Phoenix, which is not far from Glendale. He appeared to be in his late 20s.
He said he spoke to Navarro once when she said she was "looking for her uncle" near the town's post office days before the row. She did not seem to know the area.
"She was asking for directions. She looked scared," he said.
"She said she was walking with her uncle and got lost and she's looking for 6th Street. I later found out that she was referring to him as her uncle."
His girlfriend, Megan Alexander, 23, said they saw Navarro enter a "random house". Smith found it odd Navarro called him "mister" because he was only a few years older than her.
She seemed scared and had a "scratchy voice".
"Her braces looked pretty bad. She had braces on when she went missing in Arizona in 2019. It looked like she still had the same braces on," Smith said.
Police detained and questioned a man on Friday but it is not known if he was the man the couple saw Navarro with.
She ran away from home after leaving a note to her sleeping family saying she was leaving in September 2019, days before her 15th birthday.
She said she would be back but vanished for four years.
The now 18-year-old was described as safe and well and her mother declared "miracles do exist" after she returned on Sunday.
Eyewitnesses in Havre said heavily-armed officers searched a flat a few streets away from the police station in Havre, and a woman resembling Navarro was spotted at the scene.
She and her mother, Jessica Nunez, have not been reunited in person, but have spoken "briefly" on the phone, according to the family's private investigator Trent Steel.
Navarro has not made "her intentions clear" over whether she will come back to Glendale.
"Alicia is an adult, so it will be her decision as to whether or not she remains in Montana, returns to Arizona, or goes elsewhere, regardless of the investigation," a Glendale police spokesperson said.
