Parents: missing daughter text messaging us

(Jersey City -WABC, March 8, 2006) (WABC) -- In New Jersey, state and local police are taking the case of a missing girl seriously. Her family last saw her Monday morning and since then they've been receiving text messages from her cell phone, messages the police call "alarming."

Eyewitness News reporter Kemberly Richardson picks up the story live in Jersey City.

So far Stella and Robert Browne have received six very unsettling text messages from their daughter Natasha's cell phone, But is the 13-year-old typing the police for help, or someone else?

It is agonizing watching Stella Browne scroll through the series of mysterious messages.

Robert Browne, Natasha's Father: "I don't know what to think. I don't want to believe it. I still don't believe it."

The urgent pleas for help appear to be coming from their daughter Natasha. The 13-year-old left home heading to school at 8:00 a.m. Monday.

Robert says she walked in a direction she normally doesn't take and despite school records indicating Natasha arrived at P.S. 34, he says she never did.

Robert Browne, Natasha's Father: "Her friends said she didn't show up. They didn't see Natasha come to school, but they signed her in."

Then about three hours later Stella got the first message: "Someone was following me and I just don't remember what happened. I just woke up in a basement. It's pitch black."

Chief Robert Troy, Jersey City Police: "Her disappearance is totally out of character. She's a good student, no problems with the family. Her friends are very concerned and so are we."

Hours passed before the second message: "He's making me do disgusting stuff I don't want to do."

Ten minutes later came another message: "He and he is telling me they will hurt me if I don't listen to them."

Stella desperately tried to get more information. Police have taken Natasha's home computer and believe at least one message was sent from downtown Jersey City, the other from Union City and that Natasha may be in Fairlawn.

Just before 9:00 Monday night the exhausted couple got the final message: "They're taking me to New York."

Stella Browne, Natasha's Mother: "We just assumed that the batteries died and now it's much worse."

Police also say that on Monday several of Natasha's friends also received text messages but at this point if you call her cell phone it goes straight to voice mail.

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