San Ysidro
Police were searching Thursday for a 17-year-old Mexican girl and the three men who robbed and kidnaped her in San Ysidro after promising to smuggle her and her brother to Los Angeles, a San Diego Police spokesman said.
The abduction occurred about 1 a.m. Wednesday after the girl, Margarita Luevanos-Garcia, and her brother, Jose Luevanos-Garcia, 34, had been smuggled across the border by a Tijuana man they had paid $250 to take them to Los Angeles.
After they crossed the border, the Tijuana man and two other smugglers told the girl and her brother to hide in bushes near San Ysidro Boulevard and Interstate 805 while they went to get coffee.
When the three smugglers returned, they hit the girl and ripped open her dress and took $570 that she had hidden in her brassiere, police said. The smugglers also beat the brother before they forced the girl into the car and drove away.
The brother has returned to Colima, Mexico, to wait for possible word from the abductors, police said.
The kidnapers used a maroon two-door car, authorities said. Police said they obtained a Tijuana phone number that apparently belonged to one of the smugglers, but the occupants of the house told police they had no knowledge of a smuggler or kidnaping.
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