UPDATE: New details have been released in the disappearance of a South Florida teen.
Authorities said Naketa Leiba, 17, disappeared last Wednesday on her way home from school.
A week later, detectives found her unharmed at a friend’s apartment, whom she had been staying with, near Sherman Circle and 84th Avenue in Miramar. “I’m very, very happy, but right now, I’m upset because it’s been going out there that she was a runaway, and she’s not a runaway,” said the teen’s father, Michael Leiba.
However, both the FBI and Miramar Police insist the 17-year-old did, in fact, run away from home. Officials said she voluntarily gave a sworn statement to police, stating that she had run away from home and was not coerced or held against her will.
Authorities also said that Naketa Leiba’s parents should have known the teen had not been abducted. “When we showed up at the apartment, she’s hiding under a bunk bed,” Tania Rues of the Miramar Police Department said. “Clearly, she did not want to be found.”
There are also indications that 24 hours before Sharon Leiba, the mother of the 17-year-old, made a tearful plea on local radio for help in finding her missing daughter, she already knew her daughter was with someone she knew. “I want the public to know that my daughter is not a runaway,” Sharon Leiba said on Friday. “She would not run away from home, so please, please, if you have any information or if you have my child, please let my baby go.”
Police were able to find the teen inside the Miramar apartment because they traced a phone call that was made the day after the teen vanished, in which Naketa Leiba reportedly told her parents to leave her alone.
Even after they received that phone call, however, the teen’s parents insisted their daughter had been abducted. “That’s how I feel right now, is somebody’s holding her against her will right now,” Michael Leiba said on the radio.
Loved ones and complete strangers spent days passing out flyers and made a public plea for any information that would lead to her safe return. In addition, at least four detectives hunted for the 17-year-old. Rues said, “A tremendous amount of effort went into this case. We’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of staff hours, numerous detectives, IT staff, crime analysts.”
It appears as though Naketa Leiba was not the child her mother made her out to be. The 17-year-old had skipped school repeatedly, and police were called to her home on Feb. 13 last year, when she broke out of her bedroom window and came back home drunk.
The teen reportedly kept company with 29-year-old Mario McCurvin at the apartment where she was found. McKurvin is a former cocaine trafficker who was recently charged with illegal possession of three guns and 211 rounds of ammunition.
A missing teen’s mother delivered a pointed message Monday: “I want to tell the person who has her that all they have to do is drop her off somewhere, and we’ll pick her up. Just drop her off.”
Sharon and Michael Leiba have been reliving the moments before their 17-year-old daughter, Naketa Leiba, disappeared while walking home from school last week. They fear she may have gone with someone she knew and now is being held against her will.
“I know we are going to find her,” Sharon Leiba said. “I am staying strong so that she could stay strong and come home.”
Miramar police detectives, with assistance from the FBI, are investigating the missing-person case, said Tania Rues, Miramar police spokeswoman.
“We have not ruled out that Naketa has run away,” Rues said. “Either way, a thorough investigation is being conducted to make sure she is not in any danger.”
Naketa Leiba, a senior at South Broward High School, was last seen getting off her school bus near the 6800 block of Southwest 34th Street in Miramar.
She called her mother, a substitute teacher in Broward County, for a ride home. But her mother said her school was on a security lockdown and she couldn’t leave. Naketa Leiba told her she would probably walk home, her mother said.
About an hour later at 4:25 p.m., Naketa Leiba told her mother in a phone call that she was “on my way.” That was the last time they spoke, her mother said.
Several people have provided tips to the police but “unfortunately nothing has panned out,” Rues said.
Almost 700,000 reports of missing people were added to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center in 2010, the latest figures available. Of those, the majority were juveniles and runaways, the records show.
Without knowing whether Naketa Leiba ran away or was abducted, investigators likely are examining both possibilities simultaneously, said Bob Lowery, executive director of the missing children’s division at National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Alexandria, Va.
Detectives typically examine whether a child was having trouble at home or school, or any “reason why she would have left voluntarily,” he said. They also explore whether a child was “lured by someone who would do her harm,” said Lowery, a retired St. Louis deputy chief.
Sharon Leiba said a man had been calling out to her daughter as she got off the school bus between August and November 2011, and that the episodes stopped after a male friend started walking home with her.
Miramar police said the suspicious activity wasn’t reported at the time. It was reported to a detective after the girl vanished, Rues said.
Monday’s heavy rains hampered the Leiba family’s walking search of Washington Park. The family and supporters plan meet at the park at 9 a.m. Tuesday. It’s the last area where the girl’s cellphone sent out a signal, her parents said.
Her parents opted to hand out fliers at Pembroke Road and South 52nd Avenue on Monday. By early afternoon, friends, relatives and good Samaritans joined the couple at the intersection.
One volunteer, Akbar Ali, said he heard of the family’s plight on the radio earlier in the day.
“All of us have kids. It hurts to see this going on,” Ali said. “I had some spare time, so I wanted to do this for them.”
Leiba’s parents said their daughter showed no signs of wanting to run away. “She has a lot of stuff going for her,” Michael Leiba said. “Honor student since Day One.”
Leiba, who excelled in science and math, recently applied to Florida State University and Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University in Tallahassee, her mother said. Her older brother attends Florida State.
Though Leiba’s family hails from Jamaica, she was born in Queens, N.Y.
In 2000, she and her family moved from their “rough” New York neighborhood to South Florida, her mother said.
A large blue folder kept by her father has stacks of her honor diplomas, grades and pictures of her as a little girl. This year, she was readying for her high school graduation, and she was considering a career in nursing.
For some extra money, Leiba braided hair. She was looking forward to her prom, even though she couldn’t afford a luxurious dress, Michael Leiba said. She turned down an invitation from friends to shop for dresses.
“I told her we would figure out a way to afford it, but she didn’t want to go,” her father said. “She was more worried about us.”
On Monday, Sharon Leiba said she also had a message for her daughter.
“If she is out there, I just want her to know that, ‘Mommy and daddy love you, and everyone loves you,’ ” she said.
How to help
Miramar Police ask anyone with information about the missing-person case to call 954-602-4000. Naketa Leiba was last seen wearing a red Abercrombie short-sleeve shirt with a pink rose on the front, and blue jeans. To volunteer with search efforts, go to the “Please Help Find Naketa Leiba” page on Facebook.
Selfish doesn’t begin to describe what this girl did. She wasted thousands of dollars and countless hours of searching for what?
People like this should be thrown in jail. You know exactly what i’m talking about. The people who exploit the system and just laugh about it when all is over. College bound… yeah right. she’s probably going to run away from that as well. What a waste of life.
She was found yesterday. She actually ran away & was staying with a friend about 3 miles away. Link from local paper: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/08/2630532/missing-teen-found-safe-a-week.html
I know right, horrible having people look for her.