JUST IN ⚠️ A local delivery driver told investigators he spotted Jacqueline “Mimi” Torres-Garcia (11 years old) near a white SUV on Myrtle Street the evening she disappeared. The vehicle was captured only once on nearby CCTV — and never identified again. Now, authorities are reviewing over 240 hours of footage frame by frame
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Arrest warrants provide new details in New Britain girl’s death
Mother admitted to starving victim, restraining her with zip ties
NEW BRITAIN, CT (WFSB) – Arrest warrants for the three suspects charged in connection with the death of an 11-year-old girl were released on Tuesday.
The warrants detailed what led police to charge 29-year-old Karla Garcia, 30-year-old Jonatan Nanita, and 28-year-old Jackelyn Garcia.
The remains of Jacqueline Torres-Garcia were discovered in a plastic tote at an abandoned home on Clark Street in New Britain on Oct. 8, 2025. Officials estimated that she had been dead for about a year.
In a case already riddled with deception, neglect, and unimaginable cruelty, a startling new lead has emerged in the investigation into the death of 11-year-old Jacqueline “Mimi” Torres-Garcia. A local delivery driver, whose routine route through New Britain’s shadowed streets unwittingly intersected with tragedy, has come forward with a chilling recollection: spotting a young girl matching Mimi’s description near a white SUV on Myrtle Street the evening authorities now believe she “disappeared.” This sighting, captured in fragmented whispers to investigators, places Mimi outside the confines of her family’s Farmington home far later than previously thought, potentially upending the timeline of her abuse and demise. With the white SUV appearing only once on nearby CCTV—and vanishing into the ether—authorities are now poring over more than 240 hours of grainy footage, frame by painstaking frame, in a desperate bid to trace its path.
The revelation, first reported by NBC Connecticut late yesterday, injects a fresh layer of urgency into a probe that has gripped Connecticut and beyond. Mimi’s remains, discovered on October 8, 2025, in a plastic storage bin behind an abandoned property at 80 Clark Street in New Britain, were in an advanced state of decomposition, suggesting her death occurred months earlier—likely in September 2024, according to confessions from her mother, Karla Garcia. Yet this driver’s account, detailed in unsealed affidavits from October 29, hints at a far more protracted ordeal. “It was just a kid standing there, looking lost by that white SUV,” the driver, a 42-year-old father of two who requested anonymity, told police during a voluntary interview on October 28. “She had on a pink hoodie, maybe jeans—small, like elementary school age. I remember thinking she shouldn’t be out alone at dusk.”
Myrtle Street, a narrow residential artery in New Britain lined with modest row houses and flickering streetlamps, lies just blocks from the Clark Street dump site. The driver, employed by a local courier service, was en route from a drop-off on nearby Arch Street around 7:15 p.m. on September 19, 2024—the very date Garcia later admitted to her sister, Jackelyn Torres, as Mimi’s date of death. As he idled at a stop sign, his headlights swept across the scene: a white SUV, possibly a Ford Explorer or Chevy Tahoe based on its boxy silhouette, parked haphazardly at the curb. Beside it stood the girl, her slight frame illuminated briefly against the vehicle’s side. “She glanced up, eyes wide, like she was waiting for someone,” the driver recounted. “Then this woman—dark hair, hurried—waved her toward the passenger door. I drove off, but it stuck with me. When I saw the news about the girl in the bin… it hit different.”
This isn’t the first anomaly in Mimi’s vanishing. Unsealed warrants from late October paint a portrait of calculated isolation: Garcia withdrew Mimi from New Britain public schools on August 26, 2024—the first day of sixth grade—citing homeschooling plans and a new address in Farmington. But according to affidavits, the abuse had escalated months prior. Mimi, born January 15, 2013, endured zip-ties binding her to a basement bedframe, forced to lie on pee pads amid her own waste, and systematic starvation as “punishment” for infractions like “stealing food.” Garcia confessed to withholding meals for the final two weeks of her daughter’s life, while boyfriend Jonatan Abel Nanita allegedly directed the restraints and cover-up. The aunt, Jackelyn Torres—a convicted child abuser previously barred from contact with minors—allegedly assisted, facing charges of cruelty to persons and reckless endangerment.
Police initially pegged Mimi’s death to late summer or early fall 2024, based on the body’s condition and family admissions. Nanita claimed ignorance of the bin’s contents during his October 8 interrogation, shrugging when pressed: “I haven’t seen Jacqueline Torres-Garcia.” He described transporting the tote from the Farmington condo to a cemetery before ditching it at Clark Street, per Garcia’s instructions. But the driver’s tip—prompted by a public plea for witnesses on local news—suggests Mimi may have been alive and mobile far longer, perhaps shuttled between locations in a bid to evade detection.
Enter the CCTV conundrum. The white SUV materialized in a single frame from a corner store camera on Myrtle and Washington Streets at 7:12 p.m. that evening: headlights on, no plates discernible in the low-res feed, a shadowy figure—possibly the girl—near the rear door. “It’s our only hit so far,” Farmington Police Chief Paul Melanson confirmed in a presser on October 29. “We’ve expanded the search to every camera in a 10-mile radius: traffic cams, doorbells, businesses. That’s over 240 hours we’re scrubbing manually. AI enhancement is helping, but it’s slow work.” The footage trove includes feeds from I-91 interchanges, Farmington strip malls, and even residential Ring devices canvassed via warrant.
This breakthrough dovetails with other loose threads. Mimi’s father, Victor Torres, had raised alarms as early as June 2025 when she skipped her sister’s fifth-grade graduation. Garcia stonewalled him, claiming “school,” and rebuffed his DCF wellness request for lack of an address. Then came the infamous January 2025 video call: DCF caseworkers, probing sibling abuse allegations, connected with a child Garcia swore was Mimi—homeschooled and “visiting relatives out of state.” It was a ruse; the girl was a friend’s daughter, coached to impersonate. “We couldn’t have anticipated the deception,” DCF Interim Commissioner Susan Hamilton insisted in a timeline release, noting no prior substantiated abuse reports on Mimi during their sporadic involvement from 2014-2021.
The driver’s sighting, if corroborated, could crack the conspiracy wide open. Was the SUV a family vehicle? Warrants list a white 2018 Ford Escape registered to Garcia, but neighbors describe Nanita’s black pickup as the household staple. “If that girl was Mimi, it means she wasn’t locked away the whole time,” Torres told reporters outside Torrington’s Litchfield Judicial District Courthouse on October 14, where arraignments loomed. “They moved her. Hid her in plain sight. God, what did they do to my baby?”
Community anguish, already palpable, has surged. The Clark Street memorial—teddy bears, faded drawings, “Justice for Little Mimi” placards—now includes a makeshift vigil for the “lost evening,” with purple ribbons (Mimi’s favorite color) tied to lampposts on Myrtle. Vigils drew 200 on October 29, chants of “No more hidden horrors” echoing as parents clutched their children. On X, #MyrtleStreetMimi trended regionally, users dissecting blurry stills from the CCTV: “That hoodie—pink zip-up, like the one in her school pics,” one post speculated, attaching side-by-side comparisons. (Note: While X searches yielded tangential discussions on child safety and viral sightings, direct posts on this lead were emerging as of press time.)
Legal ripples are immediate. Prosecutors, led by Hartford State’s Attorney Sharmese Walcott, amended Nanita’s charges on October 27 to include tampering with evidence and false statements, citing inconsistencies in his bin-transport narrative. Garcia’s bond remains $5 million; all three defendants—Garcia, Nanita, Torres—plead not guilty, with trials eyed for spring 2026. “This sighting changes everything,” Walcott said. “It demands we revisit forensics, timelines. Was her ‘disappearance’ a staged exit, not a basement death?”
Broader reforms accelerate. Governor Ned Lamont’s October 27 nomination of Christina Ghio as Child Advocate explicitly references Mimi’s case, vowing “ironclad oversight” for homeschooling—Connecticut’s permissive laws, requiring just a one-time notice, under fire since the withdrawal. “Mimi’s Law” petitions, surpassing 50,000 signatures, push for annual in-person checks, DCF body cams, and red-flag databases for convicted abusers like Torres. The Office of the Child Advocate’s probe, launched October 15, now incorporates the Myrtle lead, scrutinizing video verification flaws.
Advocates like Joyanna Priest of Homeschool Alumni Podcasters decry the “isolation loophole,” linking it to at least three Connecticut child fatalities in five years. “Homeschooling isn’t the villain,” Priest notes, “but unchecked, it’s a shield for monsters.” State Rep. Corey Paris pledges 2026 bills: “No more ghosts in the system.”
Yet beyond indictments, this is Mimi’s story—a girl who loved drawing unicorns, dreamed of veterinary school, whose laughter once echoed Slade Middle School halls. The driver, haunted, started a GoFundMe for her memorial park, raising $12,000 overnight. “I wish I’d stopped,” he wrote. “Maybe then she’d be here, chasing fireflies on Myrtle Street.”
As frames flicker in darkened review rooms, one truth endures: the unanswered glimpses—of a pink hoodie, a white SUV, a child’s wide eyes—were cries in the twilight. For Mimi, it’s a heartbreaking echo. For the vulnerable, it must be the spark that illuminates the shadows.
