Police search Montana apartment where young woman who ran away from Arizona home in 2019 at age 14 before resurfacing last week may have been living with a man

Police conducted a search of a Montana apartment where Alicia Navarro — who last week resurfaced in the state after running away from her Arizona home in 2019 when she was 14 years old — may have been living with a man.

What's the background?

On Wednesday police announced that Navarro, now 18, had walked in alone to a Montana police station and identified herself in order to be taken off a missing juveniles list, telling officers that "no one hurt me."

Police took a photo of Navarro during her visit to the station:

Image source: YouTube screenshot

Navarro was described as having high-functioning autism when she departed her Glendale home in the middle of the night nearly four years ago on Sept. 15, KSAZ-TV reported.

She left a note for her mother that read, "I ran away. I will be back, I swear. I'm sorry. — Alicia," the station said. Her mother, Jessica Nunez, had been searching for her ever since, KSAZ noted.

KSAZ reported that Glendale Police spokesperson Jose Santiago said Navarro "by all accounts went on her own free will, she is not in any kind of trouble, she’s not facing any kind[s] of charges, she is not being held anywhere. She is coming and going [on] her own free will, and she has been extremely cooperative not only with our folks but our federal partners as well."

Santiago also said Navarro "is by all accounts safe, she is by all accounts healthy, and she is by all accounts happy," the station added.

What happened during the apartment search?

KNXV-TV reported that police from Glendale served a search warrant Wednesday at an apartment in Havre, a town of around 9,000 located about 40 miles from the Canadian border.

Image source: KNXV-TV video screenshot

"This guy gets out, he’s got an FBI vest on and pulls out an assault rifle," Havre native Ron Turner told KNXV about what he saw go down. "Then some police pull up and everyone had their guns drawn."

Johnathan Michaelson, who lives in the same apartment building, told KNXV that "they went in with like ARs and body armor."

KNXV added that both Tuner and Michaelson said officers asked them questions.

"He eventually came up, one of the guys while I was talking with my neighbors, that was supposedly undercover," Michaelson told KNXV. "[He] told me he was up here from Arizona. Pretty much what he wanted to know was how well I knew my neighbors. Whether or not there was a girl that had been living there, late teens."

Turner added to KNXV the he saw a woman he believes was Navarro speaking with officers and that police were at the apartment for hours.

"I know they were taking pictures because I could see in the front door, and there was a flash going off," Turner noted to KNXV.

Turner added to the station that he saw a man in handcuffs, but KNXV noted that Glendale police have said no one has been arrested or detained.

However, the Associated Press said a man was detained and questioned by police at the apartment that night and released.

The AP said Glendale police spokesperson Gina Winn indicated that a person was temporarily detained for questioning Wednesday and released as Glendale detectives executed a search warrant: “That was the purpose of the search warrant, to interview a person."

The AP reported that Garrett Smith lives in the apartment next to the one that was searched, and he said that for at least a year Navarro lived there with the man who was questioned. Smith described them as quiet, the outlet added.

The AP said one of its reporters on Friday knocked on the door of the apartment that was searched, and the woman who opened the door said she wanted to be left alone. The AP added that the woman didn’t give her name "but looked and sounded like Navarro."

More from the AP:

Police had not made any arrests as of Friday night and questions remained about how she got there, who she has been with and what she has been doing since she ran away.

Authorities in both states aren’t saying much and neither is Alicia Navarro’s family or a private investigator they hired. Navarro has seen and spoken to her mother, Jessica Nuñez, remotely but they have not been reunited in person.

New details in reappearance of Alicia Navarroyoutu.be

Anything else?

Despite Smith's characterization of Navarro and the man in the apartment as quiet, Smith told the New York Post that on July 22 — the day before Navarro showed up alone at the Havre police station to identify herself — he heard Navarro shouting with a man inside the apartment and telling him "I will go back."

Glendale police Lt. Scott Waite told the AP that kidnapping is one of several possible scenarios in the case.

Former FBI agent Jim Egleston spent years working with victims — especially child victims — of human trafficking, and he told KTVK-TV that Navarro's choice of words to police signaled to him "what I saw in many of the victims that I helped recover ... and that is they often don’t recognize that they are a victim. It used to be referred to as Stockholm syndrome. Now it’s referred to as trauma bonding.”

Egleston added to KTVK, "I don’t see how this is likely without some other person being involved, and if another person was involved, you have to question their motives, of course."

This story has been updated.

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