Alicia Navarro “hung her head” and covered her eyes “like she was crying” as FBI agents last week raided the Montana apartment she had been living in with an unidentified man, neighbors told The Post.
Navarro, 18, walked into a police department in Havre on July 23, identified herself and asked to be taken off the missing persons list — four years after she vanished from her parents’ home in Glendale, Arizona, in 2019.
Residents in the Montana neighborhood where Navarro had most recently been residing said the FBI quickly established a stakeout of her building before closing in with armed officers.
“Three Havre police [cars] pulled up out of the building and they all got out with guns drawn and went into the apartment,” neighbor Ron Turner, 69, told The Post, recalling that FBI agents with assault rifles and bulletproof vests joined the raid last Wednesday.
Turner said the agents brought a man out of the house “cuffed,” and that “they put him in a police car and they left fairly quickly.”
“I would say five to 10 minutes later they bring this girl out… They brought this girl out and I told my wife ‘Oh man, that don’t look good. She looks really young.’”
“Little did I know she was legal age but she sure didn’t look it,” Turner, a retired land surveyor, said.
“She seemed fine when she first came out. Then she covered her eyes like this for a while,” he said, cupping his eyes with his hands.
At one point, Turner said officers entered the house with evidence-gathering kits.
“She covered her whole eyes like this with her head down, like she was crying.”
“The guy got taken away by the time she came out. Officers were talking to her,” he added. “They were talking to her and they were over there maybe three minutes and she hung her head and covered her face.”
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.
Navarro claimed she was okay after she identified herself to police last week — and even thanked them “offering to help me.” But police have insisted she is being treated as a victim.
“To us she is a victim, and we need to provide services to her, Glendale police Lt. Scott Waite said, adding Navarro was unharmed and required no medical attention when she came in.
Alicia Navarro’s mysterious reappearance: What we know so far
Who is Alicia Navarro?
Alicia Navarro is a previously missing 18-year-old from Arizona who unexpectedly turned up in a Montana police station nearly four years after her disappearance.
When did she disappear?
In 2019, the girl left her family’s Glendale, Arizona, home in the middle of the night just a few days before her 15th birthday. Her parents found a handwritten note from Navarro saying: “I ran away. I will be back. I swear. I’m sorry.”
Where was she found?
Navarro walked into a police station in a tiny Montana town about 40 miles from the Canadian border — and some 1,000 miles from home — and identified herself as the missing girl from Arizona.
Is she facing any charges?
Authorities in Navarro’s hometown of Glendale, Arizona, said the teen is not facing any criminal charges and is not in any kind of legal trouble.
Why did she leave?
Alicia’s mother, Jessica Nuñez, previously raised concerns that Navarro, who was diagnosed as high-functioning on the autism spectrum, may have been lured away by someone she met online.
Just before her fifteenth birthday, Navarro’s parents awoke one morning to find her gone and a note reading “I ran away. I will be back. I swear. I’m sorry,” left behind.
The 18-year-old has been described as being autistic but high functioning, and authorities have speculated she may have been suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.
“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,” ex-FBI agent Jim Egleston told AZ Family.
Though family said in a statement they were elated “Alicia has been found alive and safe,” they have been resistant to media coverage since their daughter was discovered.
“They’re not talking to reporters,” said a woman at the front door of the Havre apartment.
“I’m not talking to reporters either,” she said.
