On Feb. 8, the FBI office of Las Vegas said in an update that Zailey Unidad Flores had been located — Ed.
NBC 7's Original Story:
The FBI of Las Vegas is asking for the public's help in locating Zailey Unidad Flores, 21, who was last heard from on Jan. 12, when she told her mother over the phone that she was in Tijuana, Mexico and that she was going to die, according to her mother, April Reed.
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Zailey Flores is described as a 5'6'' woman with brown eyes, brown skin, 140 pounds and also goes by "Luna," "Uni" and "Zay." Her hair color changes frequently, most commonly brown, black or partially copper color.
Flores has ties to Detroit, Michigan; Maricopa County, Tucson, Phoenix, Laveen, and Marana, Arizona; the Slauson Avenue and Skid Row areas of Los Angeles, California; Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada; and Idaho.
She has scars on her left arm, left hand left and right wrists and vertical scars on her palms, according to the FBI. Brown burn marks are also on her left and right shins, likely from cigarettes.
Zailey Flores sounded incoherent the last time they spoke, according to Reed.
Local
The family decided to contact law enforcement when Reed's family began receiving random messages through social media with very low ransoms of about $750.
Ricardo De La Torre, Zailey's supposed boyfriend, sent screenshots to Reed of a Facebook page that had posts about Zailey, she said. The person running that page asked Reed for ransoms.
De La Torre told Reed that they both went to Tijuana to look for apartments, but then she began acting strangely and disappeared suddenly.
Zailey and her mother have not spoken much during the past three years as they have an estranged relationship due to her daughter's mental illness and drug abuse issues, Reed said. This lack of communication was not dissimilar from Zailey's past behavior, but this case seemed more extreme, according to Reed
On Thursday, she shared details about a conversation she had with her daughter.
“So I froze because she said she was in Mexico," Reed said. "So I asked the normal discovery questions to find out how she got there. She didn't answer that question. I asked her if she was OK. She didn't answer that question. She sounded incoherent. I asked her who she was with. She had met a stranger that was out there, she said he was about 19 years old and I asked her if they were harming her, if she felt like they were gonna harm her. And she said no.”
The FBI is involved in the case as well as the U.S. Embassy in Tijuana.
