Naketa Leiba, Missing Miramar Teen, Found Safe

A Miramar teen who went missing after school nearly a week ago has been found safe several miles from her home.

Naketa Leiba, 17, was found by detectives at a friend's apartment in the 8400 block of Sherman Circle in Miramar. CBSMiami reports she gave a sworn statement that she ran away, and had not been coerced or held against her will.

The South Broward High School senior had not been seen since Wednesday, when she called her mother to be picked up after school at her bus stop near Southwest 34th Street and 68th Avenue. Sharon Leiba was unable to leave work, she said, and asked her daughter to walk home.

But when Sharon Leiba arrived at the house an hour later, Naketa hadn't yet made it home.

"I called at about 4:20, and she said 'Oh, mom, I'm on the way,'" Leiba told NBCMiami. "And when I heard 'on the way,' I heard a crackle or something and then her phone went dead."

Volunteers helped police search, fanning out near where Naketa Leiba was last seen over the weekend and again on Monday. Police did not say what prompted the teen to leave home, but her father said it was hard for him to believe Leiba, who hoped to enter a nursing program, had run away.

“There’s no evidence, where are the phone records to show that she was corresponding with that friend. There’s no evidence to show that she was with that friend,” Michael Leiba told CBS Miami. "She was found in a home with no lights. An 18-year old kid, I don’t know how she pays her bills. So there’s no evidence that she ran away."