Sandy MaloneBronx, NY – The 16-year-old girl who was snatched from the sidewalk in front of her mother in the Bronx on Monday night has confessed that she faked her own kidnapping.
Police said that Karol Sanchez reappeared back at the scene at about 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday and identified herself to police officers, WCBS reported.
Police sources said Sanchez was taken to the 40th Precinct where she admitted that she had staged the whole thing in an attempt to run away.
The staged kidnapping took place at about 11:20 p.m. on Dec. 16 as Sanchez and her mother were walking along Eagle Avenue near East 156th Street in the Bronx, WCBS reported.
The girl’s 36-year-old mother told police that a beige, four-door car pulled up beside them and two men jumped out and grabbed her daughter.
The very fuzzy surveillance videos from cameras on that street show the teen and her mother fighting back against the kidnappers, who pulled Sanchez into their car and knocked her mother to the ground.
Police said there were two other men waiting inside the vehicle that the teenage girl was shoved into, according to WCBS.
The men in the car fled with the teen girl in the backseat of their vehicle and her mother called 911.
“She was just screaming ‘My daughter, my daughter, my God, someone please help me.’ She was screaming hysterically. And I was looking, wondering what was going on. She was just screaming in the street,” a witness who saw Sanchez’s mother immediately after her daughter was taken told WCBS.
Police said the mother described the kidnappers as four men in their 20s who were wearing black clothing, according to the New York City Patch.
An AMBER Alert was issued for Sanchez and Crime Stoppers offered a $2,500 reward for information on her whereabouts, WCBS reported.
Family and community members put up posters with the 16 year old’s picture all over the neighborhood in the hours after she was taken.
But then, out of nowhere, Sanchez reappeared at the scene of her kidnapping.
“We was at the pole over there, looking at her picture, and we walked up the block, she was crossing the street to the cop car, and I was like ‘Yo, that’s her right there,’” witness Tommy Feliciano told WCBS.
Witnesses said Sanchez looked like she’d been through something when she reappeared.
“She was shaken up. She was bending over, grabbing her knees, and discussing with the police. And that’s when they took her into the parking garage for questioning,” another witness, Zani Koxha, told WCBS.
Within minutes of her appearance, police celebrated Sanchez’s return on social media.
But their enthusiasm may have been short lived.
Police said Sanchez admitted the kidnapping was a hoax and said that she had staged it with four accomplices in an attempt to run away from her family, WCBS reported.
The teenager lives with her family in Dutchess County but was visiting relatives in the city with her mother when she orchestrated the hoax.
Police have not yet filed any charges related to the incident and said they needed to talk to all parties involved before making any decisions, WCBS reported.