Alicia Navarro heard arguing with man day before turning up at Montana police station to say she was not missing as questions continue to mount whether missing Arizona woman was victim of abduction and the identity of the man who she was believed to be living with.
In love with her captor? The 18-year-old girl who went missing from Arizona in 2019 and re-emerged in Montana this week allegedly fought with the man she was living with and was heard by a neighbor threatening to ‘go back’ — just one day before she turned herself in at a police station.
Garrett Smith, 22, said he heard a holed-up Alicia Navarro shouting with an unidentified man inside their apartment building in Havre, a city roughly 40 miles from the Canadian border.
‘I was here the other day and I heard them yelling. She did say, ‘I will go back.’ But that’s all I heard,’ Smith, 22, told the nypost. ‘It was the day before she turned herself in.’
Mystery man & mystery uncle?
The next day, Navarro walked into a local police precinct to request that she be taken off the missing person’s list so she could get a driver’s license and could begin living a ‘normal life,’ according to authorities.
She had been missing since police said she ‘willfully left her home’ in Glendale, Arizona home in 2019, just days before turning 15.
It’s not clear how long Navarro has been living in the Havre apartment, but Smith said she and a man in his 20s have been residents since he moved in about a year ago.
Smith also said he spoke to Navarro for the first time when she claimed she was ‘looking for her uncle’ near a post office — only days before she went to the police station.
‘She was asking for directions. She looked scared,’ he said, adding that it was clear she didn’t know her way around the area.
‘She said she was walking with her uncle and got lost and she’s looking for 6th Street,’ Smith told the nypost. ‘I later found out that she was referring to him as her uncle.’
‘Often seen holding hands’
Smith’s girlfriend, Megan Alexander, 23, said they watched Navarro go into a ‘random house’ and figured she had found someone who could help her.
Navarro called Smith ‘mister,’ which the 22-year-old man found odd because he noticed she wasn’t very much younger.
He said that the teenager appeared scared, had a ‘scratchy voice’ and had noticeably insufficient dental hygiene.
‘Her braces looked pretty bad. She had braces on when she went missing in Arizona in 2019. It looked like she still had the same braces on,’ Smith said.
Though the interaction was the first time he ever spoke to the missing girl, Smith estimates he saw her about 30 times while living at the apartment.
‘I would see both of them walking out,’ he said. ‘Quite often. I think I saw them holding hands once when they were leaving.’
Unanswered questions
‘They were very shy, closed-off people.’
Smith had spoken to the man living with Navarro shortly after moving in last year, but the anonymous man began avoiding Smith after finding out he was from a city just nine miles from where Navarro vanished three years prior.
‘When I first moved in, he came up to me and asked why I moved to Havre. I told him [I’m from] Phoenix, Arizona and after that he got quiet and bridged off. He wanted to end the conversation almost like I don’t want to talk about Arizona,’ Smith recalled.
Feds and scores of cops were at the building on Wednesday, he said.
Smith believes Navarro is still living inside.
A woman who lives across the street said she was questioned by authorities on Thursday.
‘At the end, they asked if I’ve seen a girl about 18 with dark, long hair,’ said the woman, according to the nypost.
She said the authorities gave a minimal description of the man, but she remembered them describing him as ‘heavy-set’
The couple described him the same way, said he’s in his late 20s.
Police said Friday that a man was detained and questioned in connection to Navarro’s disappearance, though it is unclear whether it was the same individual she had shared the Havre apartment with.
Nevertheless countless questions remained. How did Alicia Navarro manage to survive so many years off the grid and had she willfully gone away with another man and was that other man the same man that she was heard arguing with by her neighbors? But perhaps most interestingly, why had it taken Alicia almost 4 years since disappearing to finally reach out?
On the day Navarro left her Glendale, Arizona family home, she had left a note behind that read: ‘I ran away. I will be back. I swear. I’m sorry.’
A missing person report from years prior described Navarro as autistic but high-functioning.
Navarro told police she was not being held against her will and could come and go freely, and said she had not been hurt. Police have said she does not face criminal charges.
If it is proven that the man that Navarro is living with is the same man that she ran away with in 2019, the man will likely be brought in charges – this despite Navarro seemingly staying with her alleged abductor – the same man, that some wonder had come to fall in love with, in a condition called stockholm syndrome.
Navarro is still being considered a victim. Despite turning up a police station, the 18 year old has only ‘briefly’ spoken to her mother, with Navarro’s mother conceding no plans had been made for mother and daughter to re-unite.
