An Arizona teen missing for four years who reappeared in Montana last week was heard fighting with a man in an apartment one day before she alerted authorities to her whereabouts, the New York Post reports.
Last Sunday, July 23, 18-year-old Alicia Navarro went to a police station in Havre, Montana, and asked to be removed from a missing person’s list so she could obtain a driver’s license. The teenager reportedly said that she wanted to begin living a “normal life,” according to the Associated Press.
Neighbors who live in the same apartment building now tell the Post that one day before she went to police, Navarro could be heard arguing with a man she was living with.
“I was here the other day and I heard them yelling. She did say, ‘I will go back.’ But that’s all I heard,” Garrett Smith told the newspaper. “It was the day before she turned herself in.”
Navarro, who has been described as having high-functioning autism, has been missing since she was 14. She allegedly ran away from her home in Glendale, Arizona, in 2019 and left a note that she would one day return. “I ran away. I will be back. I swear. I’m sorry,” the note read, according to Fox 10 Phoenix.
It was not immediately clear how long Navarro has been living at the Havre apartment, however Smith said the teen and a man believed to be in his late 20s have resided there since he moved into the building approximately one year ago.
Smith indicated that he saw the teen and the man dozens of items while they were living in the same building.
“I would see both of them walking out, quite often. I think I saw them holding hands once when they were leaving,” Smith told the Post. “They were very shy, closed-off people.”
Smith added that shortly after he moved in last year, he spoke with the man living with Navarro, but the man seemed to avoid him after the conversation. Smith suspects the reason why is that he is from Phoenix, Arizona, just nine miles from where Navarro lived before disappearing.
“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 told the Post.
According to Smith, he did not interact with Navarro for years, and the first time he and the teen spoke was just days before she went to police last week.
Smith said he saw Navarro near a post office in the town, approximately 40 miles from the Canadian border. She said she was “looking for her uncle” and did not seem to know where she was or how to navigate the area, according to the Post.
“She was asking for directions. She looked scared,” Smith told the Post. “She said she was walking with her uncle and got lost and she’s looking for 6th Street. I later found out that she was referring to him as her uncle.”
Smith also remembered that Navarro called him “mister,” which he found odd because he is 22 years old, not very much older than her.
His girlfriend, 23-year-old Megan Alexander, told the Post they watched the teen enter a seemingly “random house” and assumed she would find someone who could provide assistance.
On Wednesday, days after Navarro first went to police, numerous heavily armed law enforcement officers, including federal authorities, executed a search warrant at the apartment building, according to the AP.
Officers were seen escorting a man in handcuffs out of the building, and investigators questioned nearby residents and neighbors. One woman who lives across the street from the building said she was interviewed on Thursday.
“At the end, they asked if I’ve seen a girl about 18 with dark, long hair,” the woman told the Post.
Police said they had detained a man temporarily and questioned him as part of an investigation into Navarro’s disappearance, but no arrests have been made in the case, according to the AP.
Navarro told investigators she was not held against her will and was not hurt. She has reportedly spoken to her mother, Jessica Nuñez, briefly since resurfacing, according to the Post.
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[Feature Photo: Ryan and Ellio Hardman/West Virginia Regional Jail]
