Tori Perozo: Family of missing 12-year-old who ran away from home searches for her using AirTag

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK: Since Tuesday, April 9, a 12-year-old girl from Brooklyn has been missing after running away from home, according to her distraught sister.

Eliana Perozo, Tori's sister and legal guardian, reported that Victorious Smith, also known as Tori Perozo, was last seen around 6:50 in the morning on Tuesday. She was leaving her home in Prospect Lefferts Gardens on Ocean Avenue and heading to The Baccalaureate School for Global Education in Queens.

Eliana's efforts to track Tori's whereabouts

Tori left when the school day ended. Eliana claimed, “When school let out, I was watching her on her AirTag,” which Eliana had attached to her house keys.

“I can see her get on the correct train from school …  then I saw her go into the city and then once she hit the city I saw her AirTag go up towards the Bronx instead of down towards Brooklyn,” Eliana elaborated, as reported by the New York Post.

"That’s when I knew that she was at least going somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be going,” Eliana said.

The previous evening, Eliana, who is also Tori's legal guardian, stated that she had confiscated Tori's phone because Tori had been texting an older boy.

She mentioned that after confiscating Tori's phone, she temporarily replaced it with a flip phone. Tori stopped responding to calls shortly after heading uptown, and no contact has been made since then.

After contacting Tori's closest friend, who is helping Eliana care for Tori, they managed to find her and track the AirTag signal to 134th Street and St Anne's Avenue in the Bronx.

Two hours later, the tracking device was on the move again and eventually came to a stop at an apartment building. Another friend went to investigate and encountered an apologetic man who had retrieved the AirTag from the location on 134th Street where it had last been pinging.

However, the man stated that he hadn't seen Tori.

Tori left home in a Blue hooded sweater and striped pants

On Friday, April 12, Eliana received a call from NYPD Detectives who informed her that they had security footage showing Tori boarding the N/R line at the NYU-8th St subway station near Astor Place in the East Village around 5:45 am on Thursday, April 11.

"That has lifted an incredible weight off my shoulders and off my sister's shoulders, who's here in town with me searching [for Tori]," Perozo said, noting that approximately 30 people have volunteered to assist with canvassing efforts.

“A lot of people are working hard to find her and she’s really loved and I don’t want this moment to be a defining moment in her life. She’s a really great kid,” she said.

Tori had to cope with her mother's absence along with getting into trouble the night before she disappeared; Perozo mentioned that they hadn't heard from her mother in two months.

“I think she’s a 12-year-old who survived a lot of loss and there’s so much support and mental health services and people that love her and support her — but I feel that’s not the case in her 12-year-old mind so she ran away.”

According to police, Tori was last seen sporting a pink LL Bean backpack, black and white striped pants, white Nike Air Force 1s, and a blue hooded sweater with the words "Keith Haring" written in cursive.

According to an online missing person poster, she is listed as weighing 160 pounds and standing at 5 feet 1 inch tall.

Call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or, in Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782) if you have any information about this incident.