Kidnapping is by far one of the worst possible crimes anyone can commit. It takes a real lack of humanity and empathy to put a young, innocent child in such a scary and dangerous situation, but that’s exactly what happened in San Antonio on July 31st.
Fortunately, the 9-year-old victim in this particular case was found safe and sound by the police, and the people responsible are in the process of being punished for their crimes, but the situation could have been so much worse.
The 9-year-old boy, who has not been named, was found by police just in time after an intense night-long search.
Police had been tracking the child through Tuesday night and into the early hours of Wednesday morning.
The dramatic scene finally came to an end at 12.30am on July 31st at an H-E-B grocery store parking lot, where the child was found inside a parked car. But the story only became more dramatic from there as police uncovered the full extent of what had happened.
The authorities had believed that the child had been kidnapped earlier in the evening, but the real truth was even more sinister. This was no ordinary kidnapping; it was actually a carefully planned case of human trafficking.
According to a press release later shared by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, it turned out that the child was Mexican and had been smuggled over the border by American citizen 26-year-old Elida Kassandra Moreno, who used her own son’s birth certificate to get the child into America.
Moreno’s friend’s neighbor had asked her to get the boy into America and deliver him to a family in San Antonio, being paid $1,700 for her role in the plan.
Moreno brought the boy to San Antonio, staying at a motel where she met with Nery Uriostegui Dominguez, a 26-year-old Mexican national. She was supposed to give the boy to Dominguez (pictured bel0w), but in the end, she refused. The pair allegedly argued, alerting some locals.
Moreno instead gave the boy to her neighbor’s father, a local man, aged 65 and named Manueal Monsivais.
Monsivais was tracked by police and apprehended at the grocery store. San Antonio Police’s ROPE officers had received several leads throughout the night that led to them tracking down Monsivais, with SAPD officers also involved in the arrest. They worked together to block the man’s car in the parking lot, giving him no way out, and then recovering the boy.
Both Moreno and Dominguez were also taken into custody and all of them are facing a possible sentence of up to 10 years in prison for their role in this alleged human trafficking case.
As for the boy himself, reports state that he wasn’t harmed but must surely have undergone a lot of mental stress and trauma during this shocking story. The latest news regarding the case does not mention whether the boy is still in America or has been returned to Mexico.
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