Texas 13-year-old 'lured' by man online found safe in Mexico, police say

Ashlee Hattermann, 13, was discovered by authorities in Mexico City on Sunday night, police said. (FBI San Antonio)

A 13-year-old Texas girl who went missing late last week and was believed to have “been lured from her home by an online predator” was found in Mexico on Sunday, police said.

Ashlee Hattermann, of Katy, was discovered in Mexico City with help from authorities in Mexico and the FBI, the Harris County Sheriff’s Office tweeted Monday.

Hattermann was reported missing on Friday after her parents found out she only attended one class at school that day, the Houston Chronicle reported.

"The last thing we heard is that she crossed the border into Mexico," Tiffany Hattermann, Ashlee’s mother, told the Chronicle. "We got a tip from somebody in Laredo."

Hattermann was last seen on surveillance footage with a woman at a Greyhound bus station, KHOU reported. Hatterman’s parents said they believed their daughter was planning to meet an older man with whom she spoke online.

Hattermann was reportedly spotted on surveillance footage at a Greyhound bus station. (FBI San Antonio)

The other woman Hattermann was spotted with told KHOU she was duped into purchasing a bus ticket for Hattermann, who told her she was 18 years old and visiting her boyfriend in town, and was trying to get home to her family.

“We found a note in her room,” Hatterman’s father told KHOU of the man she was suspected of meeting. “She calls the guy ‘daddy’ and herself ‘baby girl.’ [The note read] ‘Daddy owns my body and my soul,' over and over and over again down this sheet of paper.”

The teen’s parents said Hattermann admitted to talking to a 29-year-old man living in Mexico. The parents said they discovered their daughter had exchanged “graphic sexual images and messages” through her phone “by using the covert messaging apps,” according to KHOU.

The Sheriff’s Office, along with FBI Agents in San Antonio and Laredo, were investigating the girl’s disappearance during the weekend — which they were treating as a runaway situation, Sheriff’s Office spokesman Thomas Gilliland told the Houston Chronicle.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, along with Homeland Security, also joined in the search for Hattermann.

The Sheriff’s Office tweeted just before 11:30 p.m. on Sunday night that Hattermann had been located in Mexico.