THE BRONX, N.Y. (PIX11) — The family of a missing 12-year-old Brooklyn girl on the autism spectrum told PIX11 News she was located in the Bronx late Tuesday night, after a social media campaign to find her apparently caused concern for the people she was staying with.
“Every time they went on social media, they saw the article,” said the girl’s great aunt, referring to a PIX11 News story. “We think they got scared and told her to leave.”
The great-aunt, who is a retired NYPD detective, said her great-niece was staying in a building near East 215 Street in the Bronx.
RING camera footage recorded Saturday night showed the girl running from her great-grandmother’s home on Clarendon Road in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. She was wearing pink sweatpants and UGG boots.
The girl’s mother told PIX11 she had accessed her daughter’s Instagram account and learned the 12-year-old was chatting all day Saturday with a male in the Bronx.
“He was just telling her to wait until everybody in the family fell asleep and just leave,” she said on Tuesday.
The mother later learned the girl took the No. 2 train by herself into the Bronx.
“She told the boy she was on the train and asked what stop she should get off,” the mom said.
The girl’s mother told PIX11 her daughter texted her Tuesday evening and asked the mom why she went to the news media. The mom said her daughter then told her she had been feeling depressed over an incident that happened in the summer.
The great-aunt said the 12-year-old’s father made arrangements to have an Uber pick the girl up in the Bronx and bring her to his home in Harlem.
“Right before midnight, my mother sent out a family text that she was with her father in Harlem,” she said.
