GILROY
– Two girls, aged 12 and 14, skipped out of school and away from
their worried families for two-and-a-half days last week, but they
returned home unhurt around midday Friday.
GILROY – Two girls, aged 12 and 14, skipped out of school and away from their worried families for two-and-a-half days last week, but they returned home unhurt around midday Friday.
“We’re doing a lot better,” 12-year-old Priscilla Del Villar’s father Manuel said Saturday evening. “She seems to be OK. She seems happy to be home. She was smiling. … We let her open one of her Christmas presents early – a (stuffed) bear – so she was happy about that.”
Priscilla ran away with friend and across-the-street neighbor Myra Pineda, 14.
A boy, aged 12 or 13, also went missing from school on Wednesday and was found Friday, but it’s been determined he was not with the girls, according to Manuel Del Villar.
The girls were reluctant to tell their parents or police officers where they were, who they were with or what they were doing Wednesday, Thursday and Friday morning. They said only that they were at a girlfriend’s house in Gilroy and vaguely mentioned going to Hollister at one point.
“They were being really stubborn about it,” Gilroy Police Sgt. Kurt Ashley said Friday.
Nevertheless, police could find no evidence that any crime occurred during the girls’ absence.
“What it sounds like is, a group of friends got together and decided to do their own thing and created a major inconvenience for a lot of people,” Ashley said.
Priscilla Del Villar’s mother Laurie dropped her off at Brownell Academy Middle School on Wednesday morning, but Priscilla never made it to her first class. Instead, other students reported seeing her get into a red, two-door car with a body style similar to a Honda, her parents later learned. At least one male, as-yet unidentified, was also in the car.
When Brownell students are absent, an auto-caller contacts their parents in the evening to alert them of the absence and reminds them of the need to formally excuse it with a phone call or written notice.
Pineda likewise never made it to class at her school, El Portal Leadership Academy.
The boy, whom police did not name, also went missing from Brownell Wednesday, but he returned to school the next day to attend class. There, school officials and police School Resource Officer Mike Terasaki questioned him and, with his father’s permission, told him to take the bus home at the end of the day. He did not, however, and his father reported him missing for a second time Thursday evening.
Police found him Friday at a residence they “had information about,” Ashley said. The Dispatch was unable to contact the boy or his family.
Manuel and Laurie Del Villar, of 941 Mantelli Drive, reported their missing daughter to police Wednesday evening and spent most of Thursday putting up posters with her photo around town. They spent Wednesday and Thursday nights wandering the streets of Gilroy on foot and by car, looking for their daughter. Manuel said he was out until midnight Thursday.
The couple has two other daughters: Jackie, 17, and Diana, 10.
On Friday, Manuel and Diana came to The Dispatch office for an interview, and Manuel broke down in tears as his youngest gave a simple message to her missing sister – that she loved her and hoped she wouldn’t run away again.
Manuel said hearing about other missing children hadn’t prepared him for having his own daughter vanish.
“It just makes you be more overprotective, and that’s how I was with her,” he said. “You have to be protective of girls these days.”
Manuel said he hadn’t allowed Priscilla to have boyfriends, and although there wasn’t much friction between her and her parents, her grades had been dropping recently. Because of this, they had just told her before she ran away that she would be grounded.
“She was kind of upset that day,” Manuel said.
Other than that, though, Manuel said he hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary with Priscilla recently.
“She had never cut class before, never missed school,” he said.
Almost as soon as Manuel and Diana got home from the Dispatch interview, the missing girls returned, safe and sound.
