Search for missing boy leads to Mexico

12:20 AM CDT on Monday, August 27, 2007

By BOB GREENE / WFAA-TV

Bob Greene reports Video
http://www.wfaa.com/video/?nvid=169679&shu=1

DALLAS - The nearly 18-hour search for a missing 8-year-old boy in Dallas ended Sunday after authorities learned the boy had been taken to Mexico.

Argenis Espindola vanished just before 6 p.m. Saturday while playing cops and robbers around an East Dallas apartment complex with friends.

"I was chasing him," said Tobaceo Valdez. "I turned around and I didn't see him no more."

Valdez and the other kids searched the area but couldn't find Espindola. The boy's guardian called police and neighbors joined in on the search.

But just before noon Sunday, the boy's biological father called police to tell authorities he took the child and was now in Juarez, Mexico. Police said he snuck back into the states without telling anyone and took the boy.

"According to the father, he didn't like the way the child was being raised and didn't like the way the girlfriend was raising him," said Sr. Corporal Janice Crowther, Dallas Police Department.

According to police, Espindola had been given to his father's girlfriend, who lives in Dallas, when the father was arrested, went to jail and was deported.

Since the dad has legal custody, authorities said there is not much Dallas police can do to get him back to North Texas.

Dallas police said they will try to contact the boy's biological mother, who he hasn't seen since he was born, in Tennessee and investigate whether she has any legal rights to try and get the boy back into the states.

http://www.wfaa.com