Missing 16-year-old girl from elite Manhattan prep school disappeared from home
Jezlieanne Colon (Courtesy of Kimberly Valera via Fox News)
NEW YORK - A 16-year-old girl on scholarship at an elite Manhattan prep school jetted out of her family's Bronx home on Saturday afternoon and now her mother fears she may be in danger.
"She just abruptly walked doubt the door on Saturday – didn't say anything, just walked out," Kimberly Valera, Jezlieanne Colon's mother, told Fox News Digital on Monday. "I haven't heard from her since."
Colon is a scholarship student at the all-female Nightingale-Bamford School on Manhattan's Upper East Side.
She attended most of her freshman year remotely from home due to the coronavirus pandemic, but started having problems at school when she began her sophomore year in-person last fall, her mother said.
Valera said she believes someone may have picked her daughter up after she left their home in the Bronx neighborhood of Castle Hill between 3:30 and 4 p.m.
"We don't believe she left on the train because she disappeared from the area so fast," Valera said. "Her brother left immediately after her to see if he could find her and he didn't."
Colon's phone has been turned off since around 5 p.m. on Saturday, but she was active on other social media apps.
"When we went into her computer, we noticed that that night that she left, she logged in to her Snapchat account at 8, at 10:30, and at 1 a.m.," Valera said. "I don't know what device she logged into, because her phone was off. I don't know, maybe she has access to it through somebody else."
Nightingale-Bamford School, which costs $59,000 a year, is the real-life inspiration for the fictional Constance Billard School for Girls in the TV series "Gossip Girl." The author of the original "Gossip Girl" novels, Cecily von Ziegesar, graduated from Nightingale-Bamford School in 1988.
"We have been in regular contact with her family and we have offered all the support we can to assist in their efforts to locate her," Thomas Hein, the communications director for Nightingale-Bamford School, told Fox News Digital on Monday. "We are deeply concerned for her well-being, and remain committed to ensuring her safe return."
Anyone with information about Colon's disappearance can call NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 800-577-TIPS (8477) or 888-57-PISTA (74782) for Spanish.
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