Update June 28, 2022: The missing girl has been located. Read more here.
Original story:
NEW YORK (PIX11) — A high school student, 15, went missing on Thursday, not long after she took a Regents exam at The High School of Fashion Industries in Manhattan.
“I don’t know how to start this but my heart is broken and I am in disbelief,” the girl’s mother, Crystal, wrote on Instagram. “My daughter has been missing since after she took her regents exam.”
The NYPD confirmed to PIX11 News that the girl was last seen near her school on West 24th St. in Manhattan around 8:46 a.m. on Thursday.
The girl lives on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. Her frantic mother wrote an initial Instagram post on Friday.
“Please God bring my daughter home,” the mom wrote. “Please bring her home to her family. It’s been too long. We can’t take this hurt no more. She’s only 15, God help us.”
On Saturday night, the teen’s mother spoke to PIX11 News by phone.
“She’s an honor roll student, on the principal’s list,” Crystal said. “She’s in the Explorer’s Academy with the police. I try to keep her focused.”
The mother said she received additional information about her daughter’s movement after school from some students who spoke to teachers and investigators.
“About two or three students took the No. 2 train with her and they got off before her at Simpson Street in the Bronx,” the mother said. “That’s about four stops past my house.”
Crystal said she also heard her daughter may have created an Instagram account behind her mother’s back. The mom had tried to keep her daughter away from social media platforms.
“No social media. I don’t allow social media,” the mother said.
She added that she heard her daughter had communicated with a boy last December.
The mother posted a second communication on Instagram Saturday afternoon, pleading directly to her daughter to get in contact with the family.
“I know I’m strict but it was always to protect you for a better life,” the mother said. “You have been on the principal’s list for two years straight now, graduating Explorers program in two weeks and just received an application for scholarships! Please don’t [lose] all of this. You have a bright future ahead of you.”