Brittany Navarro Missing: Family Pleads for Her Safe Return
Brittany Navarro, 14, is missing in New Jersey, and her family has taken to the airwaves to issue a plea for her safe return home. The teen disappeared from the Youth Consultation Service center in Newark on July 19 and has not been seen since.
"I am very concerned at this point. This has been since Thursday. I need my baby girl back home," her father Victor Navarro told NJ.com. "This never happened before. She never left the house and stood out like that. This is the first time for something like this."
Navarro had been staying at the Youth Consultation Service center since April. She disappeared on July 19 after escaping from the center with three or four other girls. They all returned back to the center, but Navarro did not, and the girls told police that she simply wandered off on her own.
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Family members have told officials that Navarro was unhappy staying at the center and wanted to return home, though she was to remain in the program until December. She was being taken care of and helped with her diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
"She may have left the program, but I think by now she would have contacted somebody or ended up going back to the program," Victor Navarro told Patch. "The bridge [in the park] she left was from Newark. She's from Jersey City … she knows nothing about Newark."
Victor fears that his daughter has been abducted, but police have not issued an Amber Alert since she left the facility willingly. Authorities have labeled her a runaway instead of an abduction victim.
"If it's a matter of her being worried she's in trouble, it's not like that," Victor explained. "We just want her home safe and sound. We love her."
