Samantha Hernandez, Fla. 15-Year-Old, Flees to Brazil with Boyfriend, Parents Try to Bring Her Home
FORT MYERS, Fla. (CBS/WINK) The family of 15-year-old Florida girl Samantha Hernandez is trying to get their daughter back after she apparently ran away to be with her boyfriend in Brazil, and Brazilian authorities gave the boyfriend's family full custody.
"It's a blur right now. We know where she is, what country she's in but we cant get her back," Samantha's father, Robert Hernandez, told CBS affiliate WINK.
Her father claims says she was supposed to be flying from Fort Myers to visit her mom in Boston on August 29.
But according to police, Samantha and her boyfriend then boarded a flight from Boston to her boyfriend's hometown in Belo Horizonte, Brazil instead.
According to WINK, Samantha met her boyfriend online about a year ago.
The station says she flew to Brazil with a falsified passport and authorities in the U.S. never caught on. But the Brazilian government did after taking her into custody.
Authorities released her to her boyfriend's family, while a legal action against her goes through the system, CNN reports.
Now Samantha's father says he can't get any help getting his daughter back and the family's lawyer says there's nothing they can legally do to get the 15 year-old back to the U.S.
"If this was a senator's daughter, if this was a congressman's daughter, somebody would've gotten her back already," Robert Hernandez told CNN.