Police have arrested a man near the police station where the missing girl Alicia Navarro turned up suddenly after four years. Witnesses also reported seeing a mysterious young woman at the scene, sparking speculation that Navarro may have been kidnapped four years ago at the age of 14 after she left home and never returned.
Navarro vanished in 2019 after telling her mother "I'll be back," and is now in the throes of Stockholm syndrome, as suggested by a former FBI agent. The autistic teenager, now 18 years old, walked into a police station in Montana this week and asked cops to remove her name from the missing children list.
Shocking New Development
She told cops that she was ready to leave the place where she had been living. The police station in Havre was approximately 1,400 miles away from her home in Glendale, Arizona.
Much of what happened surrounding Navarro's disappearance and her recent reappearance remains unknown. It is uncertain whether she willingly left with anyone when she vanished from her Arizona home in 2019, and her current intentions regarding returning home are also unclear.
However, a man has now been arrested. The man, according to reports, was arrested in an apartment just blocks away from the police station in Havre, Montana, where Navarro suddenly appeared earlier this week.
The recent arrest is believed to be linked to Alicia Navarro's disappearance, but specific details about the man's identity and the charges against him remain unclear.
Adding to the mystery, a witness reported that a young woman who bore a striking resemblance to the photograph of Navarro released by the police emerged from the apartment.
The Glendale Police in Arizona are taking the lead in the investigation. However, there are tightlipped about the investigation.
During a FaceTime conversation with authorities, Navarro assured them that she had not been harmed.
An officer asks her: "Did anybody hurt you in any way?"
"No, nobody hurt me," Navarro replied.
According to former FBI agent Jim Egleston, Alicia may be experiencing Stockholm syndrome, a psychological condition in which kidnapping victims develop feelings of empathy and even affection towards their captors, DailyMail.com reported.
"One of the keys to unraveling what happened to her and holding whoever may have been with her responsible, the investigators are going to have to spend time and develop trust and rapport with her over a series of contacts and interviews.
"Regardless of whether or not she's been diagnosed with autism, what strikes me is what I saw in many of the victims that I helped recover when I was working those cases.
"And that is they often don't recognize that they are a victim. It used to be referred to as Stockholm Syndrome. Now it's referred to as trauma bonding," he explained.
Mystery Deepens
Navarro was only a few days away from her 15th birthday when she mysteriously disappeared from her family nearly four years ago. The parents, who were asleep at the time of her departure, found a handwritten note from their daughter the next day. The note read: "I ran away. I will be back. I swear. I'm sorry," as reported by KTAR News.
However, she never returned. Navarro's family had no communication from her until this week.
But this week she suddenly entered a local police station in Montana on her own and requested to be removed from the missing children list.
Upon receiving this information, the Montana police department contacted Glendale police to verify her identity, and they confirmed that she was indeed Navarro. The authorities then informed her family that she had been located and was safe.
However, there's a new twist in the tale now with the arrest of the man. Around 10 heavily-armed uniformed and undercover officers arrived at the apartment around 8 pm and arrested the man who had been living there.
Rick Lieberg, a resident living across the street, witnessed the incident, the Mirror reported. Later, a young woman emerged from the apartment, whom Lieberg claimed he hadn't seen before. He noted that the woman bore a resemblance to the photograph of Navarro released by the police.
"She came out, talked to the officers, then two ladies pulled up and then she got into a car with them and they left," Lieberg told the outlet.
According to Lieberg, officers stayed at the scene for several hours, conducting various activities inside the apartment, including taking pictures. The young woman, whom he had seen earlier, returned to the apartment building with two other women on Thursday, but he didn't see her entering the apartment.
Another witness, Jonathan Michaelson, who lives next door, told the Mirror that he was being questioned by a plainclothes police officer at the scene. The officer claimed to be from Arizona and inquired if Michaelson had ever seen a girl at the apartment. Michaelson stated that he had not seen anyone fitting that description.
"If she was in that apartment, I'm surprised I never saw her," Michaelson told the outlet.
Investigators are currently working to unravel the mystery surrounding Navarro's disappearance at the age of 14 and how she ended up in Montana, over 2,090 kilometers away from her hometown.
Despite the note Navarro had left behind, her mother, Jessica Nunez, expressed concerns that her daughter, who was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, might have been lured away by someone she met online.
