On Monday, a harrowing video emerged of what was reportedly a kidnapping of a 16-year-old girl in New York City. The girl, Karol Sanchez, was walking down the street in the Bronx with her mother when a sedan pulled up alongside them and two men got out and grabbed Sanchez. They forced her in the car with two other men while pushing her mother down and drove off, leaving her mother on the sidewalk.
The next day, it was reported that Sanchez was safe after she suddenly returned to the area she was taken at around 2:15 p.m., and after speaking with police, the teen admitted to staging the kidnapping, CBS New York reports. Sources say that Sanchez was brought to the 40th Precinct stationhouse where she admitted that she staged the kidnapping with four others in an attempt to run away from her family.
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The New York Times reports that Sanchez may have come up with the plan after Sanchez learned that her family was considering moving to their native Honduras. Police officials said that the hoax was a result of the teen’s difficult relationship with her mother, who Sanchez described as “overprotective.” The teen was also adamant that she wanted to remain in the United States.
Sanchez and her family live in upstate Poughquag around 90 minutes north of the city but were visiting relatives in the Bronx at the time of Sanchez’s staged abduction. A woman who lived in the area, Breanna Faulkner, said she heard a woman screaming for around 10 minutes and went outside, where she found Sanchez’s mother “sobbing and screaming.”
“It sounded like something out of a horror movie,” Faulkner said. Sanchez’s mother was speaking Spanish, so Faulkner found a neighbor to help translate and called 911 before police arrived around 30 minutes later.
After Sanchez was seemingly taken on Monday night, missing person posters were hung and an Amber Alert was issued early Tuesday morning before she reappeared later that day.
“We were looking at the [missing poster] picture saying, ‘I hope she’s OK,’ and she walked right up,” Akash Singh told the New York Post. “She was trembling while she was walking. She just looked really scared. She put her hands on her knees and she started talking to the cops. They jumped out of the car and put her in.”
Police are now determining whether Sanchez or the men involved will be charged with a crime.
Photo Credit: New York Police Department
