All alone, the frightened teen curled up behind a large, dusty tool box at a Homestead auto shop.
The 15-year Honduran immigrant girl— who for three weeks had been held at the Homestead detention center for immigrant minors—had just escaped from the care of facility workers who were taking her to a routine doctor’s appointment Friday morning, Homestead police said.
“As she was getting off the car to go to the doctor, she made a run for it,” Homestead Police Det. Fernando Morales told the Miami Herald Sunday. “The girl then fled, made it into a busy auto shop and then hid behind a big tool box..”
For about an hour, police say, she wept.
“She was very scared and refused to move,” Morales added. “She said she didn’t want to go back.”
The teen girl’s escape was first reported by the Washington Post. The paper said the girl compared the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children — which sits about five miles northeast from the auto shop— to a “prison.” The girl has crossed the U.S. Mexico border alone last month.
Read more at our news partner, the Miami Herald.
