Police announced Tuesday that a couple who went missing while driving across the country to Orange County has been found safe.
Police say that Nikki Alcaraz, who is 33, and her boyfriend, Tyler Stratton, were found in Eureka, California. This comes after Alcaraz was said to have been seen in a Redding Walmart.
When she sold her phone at an EcoATM, a picture was taken.
“The Eureka Police Department got in touch with Missing Person Nikki Alcaraz earlier today and found her to be safe,” police said in a statement. “… Nikki is no longer on the list of people who are missing.”
Local news said that Stratton was arrested, but details about the arrest weren’t immediately accessible.
Alcaraz left her home in Tennessee for a road trip with Stratton and a dog in her black Jeep earlier this month.
They were going to go to Orange County to see her family, but the mother, who was 33 and lived in Moriarty, New Mexico, hasn’t been seen for three weeks.
Her family thought she was “100% in danger” when they couldn’t find her.
Reports say that when Alcaraz and Stratton got to New Mexico, there were signs that something was wrong.
On May 4, a report from the Torrance County Sheriff’s Office showed that Alcaraz had a black eye. A witness said that Stratton hit her in the face with a fist. According to the story, Stratton said he was also hit.
The tweet below from Journalist says: No excuse ever for violence
No excuse ever for violence. She was punched! Leave. Do not “go back.” Tennessee woman Nikki Alcaraz disappears during cross-country trip to California with boyfriend – ABC7 New York https://t.co/L0dhlJ94Pt
— MichelleCharlesworth (@mcharlesworth7) May 30, 2023
Neither of them chose to go to court. They went their different ways from the police station. The cops took Alcaraz to Moriarty, where she called her sister.
Toni Alcaraz said, “Her eye was already turning black, and you could tell she had been pretty badly hurt.”
A family friend drove to New Mexico and met Alcaraz there. He wanted to bring her to California, but on the day they were meant to leave, she told him she had to go back and find her boyfriend.
Toni Alcaraz got a text message from her sister on May 9 saying that she was in Arizona and was going to keep driving to California.
This month, a license plate reader found Alcaraz’s Jeep near Flagstaff, Arizona, but cops said it looks like her phone is out of service.
A theft charge in Tennessee has led to an arrest warrant for Stratton that has nothing to do with this case.
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