Texan, 13, found after trip aboard coal train

A 13-year-old Texas girl who went missing last week while vacationing with her family in Colorado Springs was found safe Monday night in a small Texas town 300 miles away shortly after having taken a trip aboard a coal train.

Adalie Rivera, from Lubbock, was last seen Friday morning at about 6:30 a.m. She and her family were at the Quality Inn Colorado Springs Airport hotel when she disappeared.

Lt. Howard Black, a Colorado Springs police spokesman, said the girl somehow ended up on the train in Dumas, Texas — a panhandle town of about 15,000 people more than two hours north of Lubbock — where she was located by law enforcement.

Black said she was unharmed despite having been missing for nearly four days.

“We’re looking at and trying to understand how she got from Colorado Springs to Dumas,” he said Wednesday morning. “We’re just doing due diligence.”

Adalie told investigators she made her way to a coal train in the Colorado Springs area, which she boarded and traveled on until she got to Dumas. There aren’t train tracks close to the Colorado Springs hotel where the family was staying, although coal trains travel south along track that’s a few miles away to the south and west.

The teen got off the train, Colorado Springs police say, after “running out of Skittles” and becoming hungry. A local farmer in Dumas found the coal dustcovered girl and called law enforcement in Moore County, Texas.

The Moore County Sheriff’s Office took custody of her until family members came.

Investigators, Black said, are trying to determine whether Adalie ran away or something criminal was involved with her disappearance. Police say, at this point in their investigation, there is no reason to believe Adalie’s disappearance was criminal.

Texas authorities referred questions to Colorado Springs police.