SHE DID NOT WANT TO GO BACK TO HONDURAS

Teen Karol Sanchez staged her own Bronx kidnapping: police sources

By Larry Celona, Tina Moore and Kenneth Garger

New York Post
December 17, 2019

The teen believed to have been kidnapped and dragged into a car in front of her mom in the Bronx admitted to cops Tuesday that she staged the whole incident, according to law enforcement sources.

But 16-year-old Karol Sanchez, whose fabricated disappearance prompted an Amber Alert, will not face charges, an officer said as she was led out of the 40th Precinct station house following questioning Tuesday night.

Police are still probing whether Sanchez’s boyfriend was involved in the framed disappearance, sources said. A possible motive for faking her own abduction remains unclear, but police sources have said that Karol’s mom wanted to move back to her native Honduras over the objections of her daughter — and that investigators are exploring whether that factored into the incident.

“Her mother wanted to move them back to Honduras, but she [Karol] was adamantly against it,” said one high-ranking police source.

The apparent 11:30 p.m. kidnapping of Sanchez near East 156th Street in Melrose momentarily shocked the city and prompted an Amber Alert.

The NYPD released surveillance footage Tuesday morning showing the moment two men jumped out a beige sedan and shoved her inside.

But by 2:15 p.m. Tuesday, a “trembling” Sanchez approached a police car near Eagle Avenue and East 156th Street. Cops escorted her away and took her to the 40th Precinct for questioning to sort out what really happened.

Sanchez and her mother, from the upstate town of Poughquag, have been in town visiting family members when the fabricated incident unfolded.