Tori Perozo, a 12-year-old girl missing since Tuesday who may require medical attention, has not been found despite being seen in and traced to Upper East Side subway stations this week, Upper East Site has learned.
“I really do just want to protect her,” Tori’s older sister and legal guardian, Eliana Perozo, 28, told Upper East Site in an interview. “She’s loved, and we want her to come home.”
Last seen by her sister leaving their home in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn, on her way to school at around 6:50 am on the morning of Tuesday, April 9th, Tori was wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt with the name Keith Haring emblazoned on it in cursive, black-and-white vertically striped pants, white Air Force One sneakers, and carrying a pink L. L. Bean backpack, police say.
The pre-teen stands at 5’1” tall, weighing approximately 160 pounds, with slightly longer than shoulder-length straight brown hair, fair skin and blue eyes, according to police and missing posters circulated by friends and loved ones.
“I’m incredibly worried,” Perozo said, explaining that Tori had gotten in trouble at home the night before she ran away for messaging a 16-year-old boy online. The big sister stressed that both she and the police have spoken to the teen, who is not implicated in the situation. “I’m so heartbroken that she thinks that she can’t come home.”
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Perozo added that Tori had been heard telling people at school the next day — she’s in seventh grade at The Baccalaureate School for Global Education in Astoria, Queens — that she planned to run away.
The 12-year-old had also been communicating with another student, Perozo said, who offered her aid in her plans, with messages like, “I’ll help you,” “I’ll keep you safe,” and “I’ll get rid of your AirTag.”
Discovering the messages scared Perozo. “She’s definitely been encouraged by a student to engage in this way,” the worried sister said, adding that Tori and the student had been friends all year.
After school on Tuesday, Perozo said, a different friend had seen Tori at the 59th Street-Lexington Avenue subway station on an N/W train headed southbound around 3:30 pm, after which the two went their separate ways. This sighting was confirmed by the NYC Public Schools press secretary on X, Thursday afternoon.
Since she went missing, Tori’s sister says her MetroCard was used at the 86th Street-Lexington Avenue subway station at 5:30 am Wednesday morning, and on Thursday morning at Greenwhich Village’s 8th Street-NYU and East Harlem’s 116th Street-Lexington Avenue stations at 5:45 am and 6:24 am, respectively, according to Perozo, who said the earlier stop was confirmed with surveillance video.
While there have been no subway sightings of Tori so far on Friday, Perozo remains hopeful, saying that she wished her sister knew how many people are looking for her.
“I really believe that this will be a tiny part of a really, really great story of her life,” Perozo said. She was awarded official custody of her sister in January 2023 because “our mother is really mentally ill and incapable of taking care of her,” Perozo said, adding that they’ve lived together for the past two years.
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“I think that she and I have had a really hard two years as we’ve both learned how to navigate being sisters and also being in positions of mother-daughter,” she said, her voice cracking as she struggled to find her words. “I wish she knew how loved she is.”
Though the AirTag tracker that usually adorns her keychain was left abandoned, authorities and family have been unable to find Tori’s phone, Perozo said, explaining that it may have been turned off and that there is no way to trace it.
“She is vibrant, she’s very funny, she has gone through a lot,” her sister said. “She is very creative. She takes art classes at the Brooklyn Museum, she loves volleyball, she’s very loyal.”
With all of the heartache and tough transitions, Perozo is adamant, “there’s nothing that she could do in this entire world that would make me not want her to come home.”
Update: Tori was reunited with her family on April 15th, her sister confirms to Upper East Site.
