“People think I’m not going crazy enough,” said Alavez Perez, 19, as she sat in her parent’s Bridgeton house Wednesday morning, moments after returning from a church where she prayed for the child’s return.
She recounted how on Tuesday, having not eaten for 36 hours, she accepted a slice of pizza from a family member as she stood in Bridgeton City Park, the site of the abduction, and was approached by a stranger who had volunteered to search for the child.
“'If my daughter was missing, I wouldn’t eat,' this lady yelled at me," said Alavez Perez, a Bridgeton native. “Then she started taking a video of me. My mother told me not to go back to the park because everyone is talking bad about me.”
Even authorities have been suspicious, she said. “The police tell me, ‘If you know where she is, tell us.’ But I told them everything. They think I’m lying; I’m telling the truth.”
While Alavez Perez spoke with her sister about the little girl’s homework in the parking lot, Dulce and Manuel ran toward the swings on the playground about 30 yards away. They were out of sight for fewer than three minutes when Manuel ran back, crying and pointing to a spot near park buildings, she said.
She called her brother and told him to bring Lalo, the family’s 8-month-old pitbull-boxer cross, to search for Dulce, and she phoned police.
Her parents — who have reversed last names, Norma Perez Alavez and Camilo Alavez Perez — emigrated from Mexico 20 years ago. The father works in a nursery, the mother in a food factory.
While Dulce and Manuel live in the family house, Alavez Perez does not.
She said she and her mother fought. “My mom kicked me out,” she said. “I was angry so much and not helping out. But because I had Dulce when I was 14, my parents loved her like she was their daughter and took official custody of her. I’m OK with it.”
Alavez Perez lives in a room in a nearby house. She said she neither works, nor is in school.
Dulce’s father, she said, is from Mexico and, after being with Alavez Perez in New Jersey for a while, returned there to study at a university in Sinaloa. “He’s finishing his studies so he could give a better life to my daughter,” she said.
Mother of 5-year-old South Jersey girl apparently abducted in Bridgeton park grieves and waits
***I hope this doesn’t post 15 times. It might. WS traffic alert.