News Coverage
Father Hopes News Of Sisters' Deaths Brings Runaway Home
Last Edited: Thursday, 01 Nov 2007, 5:32 PM CDT
Created: Thursday, 01 Nov 2007, 5:25 PM CDT
Lopez Sisters
Two Prairie Village sisters are dead after swerving to avoid a deer on I-35 Wednesday night. Now the teen's mourning father hopes a runaway sister will return home.
John Lopez hopes the news of Terra, 18, and Desiree's, 16, deaths will reach 14-year-old Marisa and encourage her to come home.
Lopez said his daughters were heading back from Wichita when the wreck happened Wednesday evening.
"They think that she swerved to not hit a deer or that it was possible that she could, she dozed off and fell asleep, but he thinks it was a deer," Lopez said.
The Kansas Highway Patrol said Terra was behind the wheel of her Camero when it left the road, hit a guard rail and went down an embankment, landing upside down.
"He told me that the car flipped and they died on impact and that there was no suffering and they were in the car when they were found," Lopez said.
Lopez said he raised his children alone for the past 10 years after his divorce.
Johnny Lopez says he and his three sisters were close, but life hasn't been the same without Marisa who ran away September 2. Now he said without Terra and Desiree his life will never be the same. His only hope now is for Marisa, believed to be in Dallas, to come home.
"Marissa, me and dad are here and hopefully you are able to see this and hear about the girls and, you just come back to us," Johnny Lopez said.
Monica Evans, FOX 4 News
Family fears daughter taken to Mexico
Reported by: Russ Ptacek
NBCACTIONNEWS.COM
Last Update: 10/04 10:13 pm
PRAIRIE VILLAGE, Kan. - A 14-year-old Prairie Village girl is missing and her family fears she's been taken to Mexico. They think she's run off with a 21-year-old man.
The dad thought he'd scared the man into leaving his daughter alone but he just recently discovered his daughter has secretly been seeing the 21-year-old over a year, since she was 13. Marissa Lopez’s family has plastered her picture on their cars and missing posters.
“I worry every night,” said Marissa’s father John Lopez.
After her disappearance, September 2nd, they found her calendar marking the day as a special day along with notes she'd written the man specifying the 8:00 time he was to pick her up. Ten minutes later her room was empty. “I kept banging on the door and kept telling her that she needed to get up,” said Marissa’s sister Terra Lopez. “But there was no answer and the door was locked.” Only hangers remain on her side of the closet. They think she snuck out the window.
“I forbad him to see her,” said John.
When Marissa’s father learned the girl was dating a 21-year-old he confronted the man who agreed to end the relationship. “I told him I was going to the police, so I started going to the police, and he called me and said he was just going to go back to Mexico,” said John. John Lopez fears his daughter is now in Mexico or on her way to Mexico. And because Marissa is a runaway Lopez fears embassy officials and police are slow to act because there's no proof the man has done anything illegal. “I was told by the police that if for some reason they are together and she's pregnant he could be facing up to ten years in jail,” said Lopez. “But that's if she's in the U.S.” Marissa’s father hopes she's still in the metro.
If you have any information you can call Prairie Village Police or the tips hotline at 816-474-TIPS.
