Search Still On For Mom Who Abducted Own Children From School

This surveillance image shows Gloria Garcia Cruz leaving Kenansville Elementary School with her two sons Friday afternoon.

By: Philip Jones | WNCT
Published: October 06, 2009

Law enforcement officers are still on the lookout for a mother who kidnapped her own children Friday afternoon.

Kenansville police say Gloria Garcia Cruz no longer has legal custody of her two sons, but checked them out of school and then took off with them.

Nine On Your Side wants to know how Cruz managed to get the boys out of school in the first place -- so Philip Jones went to find out:

Investigators say surveillance video shows Gloria Garcia Cruz signing out her two sons -- nine-year-old Luis Garcia and 10-year-old Edwin Garcia -- from Kenansville Elementary School on Friday afternoon.

Officers say she doesn't have legal custody of the boys because the Department of Social Services took them away and put them in foster care within the last few weeks “because she was homeless at the time, didn't have anywhere to go and she's schizophrenic,” says Interim Police Chief Rusty Merritt.

But now Merritt says Cruz went from having nowhere to go to being on the run.

He suspects she may have taken the boys to the Raleigh-Durham area.

But how did she get them out of school in the first place?

Duplin County Schools Superintendent Wiley Doby says he's launched an internal investigation to find out.

“We have a very good procedure in place for student checkout,” Doby said. “We have student cards on which the people who are authorized to check students out are listed.”

The police say social services only took custody of Cruz' children about a month ago and the superintendent says he isn't sure yet whether Cruz was still on the list of folks approved to check those children out of school.

In the video, you can see Cruz talking to a translator.

She only speaks Spanish and Merritt thinks the proper procedures for checking the boys out were somehow literally lost in translation.

Merritt says he isn't sure whether the boys are actually in danger, but they're doing everything they can to track Cruz down.

“That's why we're in such a hurry to try and find her,” he said.

Superintendent Doby says he can't recall any other instance when students may have been checked out by an unauthorized adult.

Merritt says police couldn't issue an Amber Alert because Cruz is the boys’ biological mother, but they have been entered in a missing children's database.

Warrants have been issued for Cruz' arrest on child abduction charges.