Police: Missing Fla. Girl, 12, Found Safe In S. Carolina
POSTED: Wednesday, April 27, 2005
UPDATED: 11:22 pm EDT April 27,2005
BRADENTON, Fla. -- An Amber Alert for a missing 12-year-old Florida girl was canceled Wednesday when she was found safe in South Carolina, and a 25-year-old co-worker of her brothers was arrested, police said.
Margarita Aguilar-Lopez was found in a Wal-Mart parking lot at about 8:30 p.m. Wednesday in Easley, S.C., where she had been driven by Antonio Paulino-Perez, said Bradenton Police Chief Michael Radzilowski.
Paulino-Perez was arrested by authorities in Easley and charged with interference with child custody under a Florida warrant, Radzilowski said. He was being held in Easley for questioning and pending a hearing to determine his return to Florida.
The girl was to be flown to Florida on Thursday.
The girl was last seen Monday night at a Bradenton motel, where she was staying with two brothers who had left her in the care of Paulino-Perez.
When the two brothers returned to their room at the Classic Inn at about 8 p.m. Monday, the child and Paulino-Perez were missing, police said.
The brothers, who are in their early 20s, did not report the girl missing until Tuesday morning, even though a police officer spoke to them at the motel at about 10 p.m. Monday while investigating a battery complaint against one of them, Rubino Aguilar.
When asked later about the delay, one told police that he and his brother were "too intoxicated and could not remember."
Margarita's parents are in Mexico. She is an illegal immigrant living with her two brothers and her sister-in-law at the motel. Margarita babysits her brother's children while the family's adults work at migrant labor in Ruskin, police said.
Bradenton is on Florida's Gulf Coast south of the Tampa Bay area. It is about 20 miles south of Ruskin, where 12-year-old Sarah Lunde was strangled earlier this month, and about 110 miles south of Homosassa, where 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford was sexually assaulted and slain in February.
A former boyfriend of Sarah's mother is charged with her death; a part-time neighbor is accused of killing Jessica.
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