Girl, 11, Missing in Suspected Abduction

Orange County law enforcement authorities intensified a search for an 11-year-old girl who got into the car of a family friend while walking to school Monday and vanished, possibly heading to Mexico, police said.

Guadalupe Hernandez Vasquez, 11, was leaving her Laguna Hills apartment with her 9-year-old sister Monday morning when the girls noticed a family friend in a parked car in front of the building, her sister, Ana Rosa Hernandez Vasquez said. Guadalupe walked toward the Toyota Tercel, even as her sister cautioned her not to go.

Police and witnesses say Guadalupe left with 21-year-old Asael Perez Celis, a San Clemente construction worker who had lived with the girl’s family for 15 months and had recently moved into an apartment in the same complex. The girls’ parents were at work when Guadalupe disappeared, at about 8:30 a.m., they said.

Guadalupe apparently left with Celis willingly, but the Orange County Sheriff’s Department is treating the case as an abduction in light of her age, said Jim Amormino of the Sheriff’s Department.