New details are being learned about 10-year-old Gabrielle Terrelonge, who went missing from South Florida, as the search for her continues.
www.nbcmiami.com
The search for Gabby: Mother arrested, but mum on whereabouts of missing 10-year-old daughter
Four months after a surveillance camera captured Passha Davis with her 10-year-old daughter at the checkout of a Hollywood Walmart, Davis was stopped and questioned last month by Margate Police investigating her for
shoplifting from a Dollar Tree.
The 34-year-old homeless woman would not give police her name.
And she also withheld another important piece of information: she had a 10-year-old daughter,
Gabrielle “Gabby” Terrelonge, who was not with her.
Even after police facial recognition software revealed her photo, name and date of birth, Davis denied it was her, police say, so she was taken to jail and charged with falsely identifying herself and resisting an officer without violence.
That
was Oct. 17.
Twelve days later, Gabby’s father – who told police he had not seen Gabby since May – searched online, found Davis’s arrest record and started making calls to find out who had their daughter, according to his sister, Gabby’s aunt.
So far, the answer is no one – not the police, who say no child was with Davis when she was arrested, not DCF, not extended family.
The last she was seen – what police called “proof of life” – was June 21 at that Walmart in Hollywood.
That’s 118 days between the last sighting and the arrest.
Now the FBI, FDLE and Margate Police are looking for any clues into what happened to Gabby.
Davis was released on $200 bond last Friday – two days after Gabby’s father, Gordon Terrelonge, reported the child missing – after telling investigators she did not know Gabby’s whereabouts and that she should be with her father.
But finding no evidence of that, Davis was
rearrested Tuesday at the Lauderhill Transit Center on State Road 7.
Police had been asking people who frequent her haunts to be on the lookout in case she reappeared, and one person called police when she was spotted, Margate Police tell NBC6.
She is now charged with child neglect without great bodily harm, a charge that can be used when there’s probable cause that someone’s failure to report a child missing put that child in danger.
Her charging affidavit states she “failed to provide any reasonable explanation as to the whereabouts of her minor child (and) failed to provide adequate services and supervision necessary to maintain her physical and mental health.”
Gabby’s extended family has been concerned about her well-being for some time, the NBC6 Investigators discovered in court records and an interview with her aunt, Gordon Terrelonge’s sister.
One year before Davis was stopped and questioned for suspected shoplifting,
Gabby’s aunt found her with Davis in an alley in the Broadview Park area of Broward County at 3:30 a.m. on Oct. 19, 2024. Gabby was asleep, lying on a blanket placed over a flattened cardboard box, with another thin blanket placed over her, her tennis shoes removed, sitting by her feet.
She took photos and called the Broward Sheriff’s Office and a case number was created; NBC6 is awaiting a response from BSO to a request for records of the encounter.
The next month,
in November 2024, the aunt sought temporary custody of Gabby from the St. Lucie County circuit court, saying in her petition Gabby would “sleep in the street with mother,” who she wrote is “on medication for schizophrenia.”
“I can provide clean, safe environment … food, love and emotional and financial support,” she wrote, requesting custody for two years.
“I wanted to save Gabby from other mishaps that can happen when you're homeless and your parent is not coherent or not mentally sound,” she told NBC6. “And Gabby is not prepared for the world.”
She said Gabby thrived when staying with her.
“Gabby's a loving little girl. She's always trying to be upbeat given the situation. She seems to try to find the joy in everything. She's very talkative. She's not afraid to speak her mind.”
But, she said, Gabby is also streetwise beyond her years.
“She's not very trusting. She's also suspicious of people because her mom has trained her to be that way as well. I think she does realize that her mother has some issues, and she's protective of her mother. She tries to correct her mother, and she tells her mother when she doesn't like something that she's doing, and she'll try to speak up despite being powerless in the situation.”
Gabby’s paternal grandmother confirmed Gabby’s dire situation in her own letter to the judge, saying they and her son, Gordon Terrelonge, 37, sometimes slept in abandoned cars when they were homeless.
Endorsing custody by the aunt, the grandmother wrote that the three of them would sometimes stay with her in Orlando for months, but “they never stay and do the appropriate planning necessary for their child to be in a stable and safe environment.”
Both Gabby’s mother and aunt describe Davis’ struggles with mental illness, with Davis admitting she had failed to take her medication at times, leading to what the aunt said was an involuntary commitment last year under Florida’s Baker Act.
Last November, when Davis and Gabby were living with Davis’ mother in Port St. Lucie, Davis began showing signs again of mental illness.
She said Davis’s mother eventually called police, and Davis was taken under the Baker Act after showing signs of paranoia when her mother suggested she get some rest.
When Davis was released from a mental health facility, she reunited with Gabby in the aunt’s house in Port St. Lucie and wrote the judge assigned to the custody case that she was seeing a psychiatrist and refilling her medication. “I intend to stay at this (the aunt’s) residence, have my daughter go to school in this area (and) for myself gain employment in this area,” she wrote in the letter dated Dec. 2.
But it did not last.
On Dec. 10 the aunt took a photo of a beaming Gabby outside the school where she’d been enrolled.
The next day, they were gone.
The aunt continued to try and press for custody, while, she said, helping the family stay in a Motel 6 in Fort Pierce for a while. But acting without a lawyer, she was unable to meet the rigorous requirements placed on those seeking to take custody from a natural parent.
In May, the judge dismissed the case because the aunt was unable to find Davis and serve her the necessary court papers to move forward with obtaining temporary custody.
It wasn’t until last month, she said, that she heard from her brother that the girl was missing, leaving all of them in fear.
“Gabby is 10 years old, and I know that's the scary part,” she said. “Gabby has never been left alone with any blood relative, not her father or her grandmother or grandfather… Her mother does not trust Gabby with anyone.”
“She follows the child to the bathroom to brush her teeth, to shower, and to use the toilet. She does not allow Gabby to leave her sight ever.”
But she was nowhere in sight when Davis was arrested near that Dollar Tree.
Her aunt remains hopeful but worried and fears the worst.
“I feel like she deserves to be like a regular girl and sleep in a warm bed and have meals and eat candy and have friends and talk to other kids,” he aunt told us. “And she knows nothing of that life and it's very sad to me.”
