A missing 13-year-old girl from Katy, Texas, was found Sunday night on Dec. 3—after her worried parents said she ran away to Mexico.
The search for Ashlee Hattermann gained national attention as the FBI’s San Antonio Laredo office offered its services as well.
Both authorities and the teen’s parents believe Ashlee was heading to Mexico to meet up with a man she met online who lived there.
The Harris County Sheriff’s Office announced the news in a Twitter post saying that Ashlee was “found safe” in Mexico.
On Sunday afternoon—before the teen was found—the FBI was asking for the public’s help.
“We found a note in her room,” said Ashlee’s father Keith Hattermann. “She calls the guy ‘daddy’ and herself ‘baby girl.’ [The note read] ‘Daddy owns my body and my soul,’ over and over and over again down this sheet of paper.”
Surveillance footage from a Greyhound bus stop in Katy, Texas, shows the teenager with an unknown woman.
The woman, who wishes to be anonymous, told WFAA that Ashlee talked to her on Friday and lied to her about her age before buying a bus ticket to Laredo.
“I asked her how old she was; she said 18,” the woman told WFAA. “She told me she was here all week, visiting her boyfriend. She told me that [her parents] lived in Laredo and that she had been up here to visit her boyfriend and she was trying to get back to her family.”
The unnamed woman said she is emotional over the incident.
“I’m just devastated, I’m so upset,” the woman said. “I’m devastated for this little girl. I’m devastated for her family.”
The parents, Keith and Tiffany Hattermann, told WFAA they also found their daughter exchanging sexual images and messages through apps on her phone last May. They do not know how Ashlee purchased the phone.
“We just feel helpless,” Keith Hattermann said. “We just want her back. We just want her safe.”
