Family Tracked Runaway Daughter, 16, to Puerto Rico by Phone Records
A 16-year-old Michigan girl traveled to Puerto Rico for a 26-year-old man.
Feb. 4, 2009 — -- A 16-year-old Michigan girl is safe and being reunited with her parents after running away to Puerto Rico apparently with a man she met online.
For Jasmine Rieberger, her sudden escape to Puerto Rico Saturday was a chance to follow her dreams, perhaps the beginning of a fairy tale.
But even though police found the girl Tuesday and she is now with her father in Puerto Rico, her parents will remember the three harrowing days after her disappearance as a nightmare.
"I'm worried I'll never see my daughter again," Jasmine's father, Michael Rieberger, said in an emotional phone call with ABC's Detroit affiliate WXYZ. "If she was killed, raped, I have no clue."
Jasmine's mother, Stacey Rieberger, said the teen met a 26-year-old man from Puerto Rico while playing an online Xbox game. The relationship expanded into conversations and text messages before Jasmine flew to Puerto Rico to meet him.
Stacey Rieberger says to cover her tracks, Jasmine destroyed her computer and Xbox and left only a note that read in part, "I am not kidnapped," and that she was going to fulfill her dreams of becoming a boxer. She used her sweet 16 birthday money to buy the plane ticket.
"From what we gathered from the note is that he made promises to her," the mother told "Good Morning America." "[He] lured her there with some kind of promises to become a boxing champion."
Police tracked Jasmine down, however, thanks to some detective work by her parents that connected the 16-year-old's phone bill to a number listed in Puerto Rico. Local authorities in Michigan passed the information along to the International Criminal Police Organization, Interpol, which tracked the man down.
When Interpol found her, Jasmine was reportedly living with the man and his family in a home near San Juan. Police have detained the man.
Stacey Rieberger planned to fly to Puerto Rico to join her husband and daughter today.
"[I] can't wait to see her," she said and then offered advice to parents. "No matter what you do, you can't protect them 100 percent of the time. The cell phone is another way the predators can get to them. That's how they got to my daughter."
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