From the New York Post: To the residents of Perrysburg, Ohio, his school pals and the guardians who welcomed him in, Anthony Emmanuel Labrador-Sierra was a 16-year-old human trafficking victim.
There was one problem. He was really 24 years old and had a baby with his ex-fiancée a town over in Toledo.
His scheme worked for over a year, with authorities falling for a birth certificate he produced shaving six years off his age.
Then one night, Evelyn Camacho, 22, mother of Labrador-Sierra’s daughter, called the house where he was living.
Labrador-Sierra’s new guardians, Brad and Kathy Mefferd, a couple in their 60s who have four children, answered the phone, and Camacho then started asking questions.
“Did he lie to me about being an adult? Or did he lie to them about being a child? I didn’t know what was going on. And I care about him. He’s the father of my daughter,” she said later to the NY Post.
The report explains that the Mefferds called the school, and the school notified police, who then came to the home to investigate. In Labrador-Sierra’s bedroom, police found a burner cellphone, fake ID, a semiautomatic pistol and three loaded 9mm magazines.
He later admitted to lying on immigration forms and on an application to purchase a gun, and has been turned over to ICE.
Now local residents and officials are questioning how they were so easily duped by a 24-year-old old, posing as a 16-year-old student. They say he blended in well with the other students, even though he did seem a little more mature than the others.
Labrador had contacted Perrysburg Schools on November 1, 2023 and said he wanted to enroll as a student. He claimed to be homeless immigrant from Venezuela and a human trafficking victim.
His actual birth date is March 27, 2001, but Labrador gave the school a “birth certificate” that showed a birth date of December 2, 2007. He was matched up with the Mefferd family, moved into their home in March 24 and they were granted permanent guardianship in November 2024.
He now faces years in prison, and deportation.
Camacho told the post she didn’t intend to get Labrdor in trouble when she reached out to him.
However, she said, “A thing that makes me really upset is that I was struggling so much to raise our daughter and he was living the life of a teenager with no responsibilities. He was being taken care of while I was trying to take care of our daughter.”
Below is the moment police arrested Labrador.
READ MORE from the New York Post.
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