National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
A screenshot of a webpage posted by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Published Thursday, April 18, 2019 | 1:50 p.m.
Updated Thursday, April 18, 2019 | 6:23 p.m.
Law enforcement officers in Nevada are no longer looking for a teen girl last seen in Southern California with her mother and a man who are homicide suspects, according to the Nevada Highway Patrol.
Alora Benitez, 15, her mother, Maricela Mercado, 40, and the other suspect, Roman Cerratos, 39, are believed to be closer to the U.S.-Mexico border than to Nevada, officials said.
An Amber Alert for the teen was issued Wednesday with phones in Nevada buzzing with an alert this morning.
The trio were believed to be traveling in a 2013 white BMW with custom Nevada plates MARIMAR, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said.
Alora was last seen today in the Los Angeles area, according to the alert.
They’d also been spotted Wednesday morning in the Los Angeles suburb of Torrance, officials said.
Mercado and Cerratos were identified as suspects in the slaying of a man whose body was found in a car Tuesday in Carson, Calif., the Sheriff’s Department said. The couple are considered armed and dangerous.
Anyone with information on their whereabouts should not approach them but call 911 or California homicide detectives at 323-890-5500, officials said.
