Mother of three missing West Palm Beach boys arrested, ordered to have no contact with her sons
The mother of three boys who disappeared over a week ago in West Palm Beach was arrested on Thursday in a mobile home park in Palm Beach County, according to police and court records.
Maria Trinidad Perez, 36, is now charged with three counts of interfering with the custody of a child. She was ordered to have no contact with her children.
Perez had previously disappeared with her three sons after their uncle, who was their guardian, fell ill and died in the hospital on May 8. Early that morning, the boys, Nicholas, Gabriel, and Juan Pablo Garnica Perez, ages 8, 13, and 16, took a rideshare to a motel in Greenacres where Perez was staying, according to West Palm Beach Police. When Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office deputies and a lawyer for the boys arrived at the motel to try to talk to Perez and see if the boys were okay, she was already gone.
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For a week, despite extensive searches throughout the county, police did not find Perez or her sons. On Monday, West Palm Beach Police detectives, through the boys’ attorney, made a final attempt to negotiate with Perez, threatening her with arrest, spokesperson Mike Jachles said. She did not respond, and that night, a Palm Beach County judge signed a warrant for her arrest.
The three boys had not been to school since they left home, according to police.
Then, on Thursday, detectives with the U.S Marshals South Florida Regional Fugitive Task Force “developed information” that led them to a trailer Perez was renting in unincorporated Palm Beach County, Jachles said. They saw her walk out of the trailer and go back inside. When they went to the door, she surrendered willingly.
She told detectives she was scared, Jachles said. The children were “respectful and polite.”
One of the detectives who is also with the West Palm Beach Police department explained to the children “that Mom had made some bad decisions and she needed to get things in order,” Jachles said.
The Department of Children and Families took the children to its West Palm Beach Office. They are now likely going into foster care, but will probably be housed together. DCF did not respond to inquiries about the children’s status Friday.
Perez pleaded guilty to three counts of child neglect in 2022 after a 2019 case in which PBSO deputies found her three children in a bedroom with no furniture. Her roommate had called for a welfare check because Perez had not returned home in three weeks, according to a probable cause affidavit, and saw her children only for a few minutes to drop off food.
Perez is being held in the Palm Beach County Main Detention Center in lieu of $9,000 bond.
