LEXINGTON, NEB. — A teacher accused of running away with a 13-year-old student planned a romantic life with him in his native Mexico, but she was nearly broke when they were captured there, authorities said Saturday.
Their border crossing during a week on the lam may mean the teen, an illegal immigrant, will not be able to come back to the rural Nebraska town where he was an eighth-grader.
The boy’s relatives told police he had called home asking for money, leading investigators to a shopping mall in the border city of Mexicali on Friday. Kelsey Peterson, 25, and the boy, 13, were taken into custody without incident.
Peterson, a sixth-grade math teacher and basketball coach at Lexington Middle School, fled with the boy after police began investigating whether the pair had an intimate relationship, authorities said.
Court documents said the boy was last seen Oct. 26. An international hunt was underway after Peterson’s car was spotted crossing into Mexico on Tuesday.
“They didn’t have a very well-defined plan; it was basically to continue driving into Mexico to hide,” said Alfredo Arenas, the Baja California state police official who detained Peterson. “This was a mutual agreement to flee after the story came out that they were having sex.”
Peterson was turned over to the FBI on Saturday. The boy was turned over to relatives in Mexicali, Arenas said.
