Police: Missing Brooklyn 15-Year-Old Special Needs Student Found Safe
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- The parents of a missing special needs student from Brooklyn who had been missing for days were reunited with their daughter Thursday.
Nashaly Perez, 15, was found at a friend's house in East New York around 7 a.m. Thursday, police said. The teen had been missing since Monday afternoon when she slipped out of P.S. 371 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
"I'm so happy," her mother, Sandra Rodriguez, told CBS 2's Weijia Jiang in Spanish moments before she was reunited with her daughter at the 60th police precinct in Coney Island, Brooklyn.
"I love her, I missed her but she's going to be punished," the teen's stepfather, William Brewley said. "Not violently, but we need to fix whatever was done. We need to take care of her."
Rodriguez said Wednesday she didn't find out about her daughter's disappearance Monday until about an hour after it took place and then only because she came to the school early to pick her up.
Nashaly was described as extremely emotionally disturbed and takes medicine to control hallucinations. Her mother feared she may be suicidal without it.
Police: Missing Brooklyn 15-Year-Old Special Needs Student Found Safe
She has been diagnosed with several other psychological disorders, including ADHD.
"When I see her and she hugged me, she was shaking and she was very sad," Brewley said.
Brewley said the teen had been hospitalized for psychological reasons several times in the last two years.
Rodriguez said her daughter normally comes home on a school bus in the late afternoon, but she had gone to pick her up early, only to be told then that her daughter was gone.
She said school administrators told her Nashaly walked out a back door even though by law, a school appointed para-professional is supposed to be by her side at all times.
Brewley criticized the school's attitude, saying officials were "like, 'It's your problem, what are you going to do?'"
Hashaly's mother was also furious over the school's response, saying school administrators waited too long – over an hour – to notify her and police.
The Department of Education has reassigned the school's principal. The department has not said whether other staff members will be disciplined.
Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina is promising an investigation into what happened.
Schools Chancellor Promises Full Investigation Into Missing Brooklyn Student
"We are going to interview all the people involved, we're going to see if protocols were followed," Farina told WCBS 880's Paul Murnane. "We're going to see, if protocols weren't followed, who didn't follow them and then we will make a conclusion and report the conclusion."
She said she takes incidents like these "very seriously."
"Having a missing child, in my book, is my child," she said. "Once I investigate what worked and what didn't work, we'll make sure that we fix it."
The family's attorney, David Perecman, said he would like the Brooklyn District Attorney's office and the Mayor Bill de Blasio to both "dig into this."
Perecman also represents the family of Avonte Oquendo, the autistic teen who ran away from his Long Island City school last October. His body was later found in the East River.
Perecman said in both cases, school officials lost track of students who by law, require constant supervision and said they waited too long to call police for help.
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