LAKE JACKSON, Texas — A missing Lake Jackson girl was found early Saturday morning after she hadn't been seen since Monday morning, the girl's father told KHOU 11.
"We found her 4am. Thank you, thank you , thank thank you!" Tim Garcia, the girl's father, said in a text to KHOU 11's Matt Dougherty. "You make a difference."
Before she was found, the 13-year-old girl's parents said she had never done anything like this and had no idea where she could be. We don't yet know the details of how or where she was found.
“She’s everything to me," said her father. "She’s my princess."
Her parents believed she stole her mother’s car from her home in Lake Jackson a little after 1 a.m. on Monday. They suspect she then drove it a little more than 5 miles away to a gravel area behind a school in Clute, Texas.
“They recovered it at around 7:30 in the morning but she wasn’t there," her mother said before the girl was found. "My keys were in the glove compartment and we’ve been searching since."
“I just think she might have been baited somehow,” her father said. “Let anybody know that if they’re harboring this minor, which is my daughter, it is a criminal offense and they will be held accountable for it.”
The girl's grandmother said she is hoping her granddaughter will be back home in time for Mother’s Day on Sunday. Thankfully, she got her wish.
