Red Springs, N.C. ? A girl who vanished at age 11 and recently turned up in Mexico — now 15 years old, and with two children — says she left home with an adult neighbor after becoming pregnant by him and was then kept captive.

Before Dana Pevia came home to Raeford, N.C., this week, her family had not seen her since she walked to the school bus just after 6 a.m. on June 4, 1999. They thought she had been kidnapped, possibly killed.

But since coming home Wednesday to a tearful reunion with her mother, Dana has told authorities that she left with her neighbor, Hector Mojarro Frausto, now 22.

She had been involved with Frausto, and shortly before she disappeared she told him she had been getting sick every morning, Hoke County Sheriff Hubert Peterkin said Thursday. Frausto, suspecting Dana was pregnant, arranged for them to travel to his family home in Mexico, Peterkin said.

“She went along with the situation and realized it was a problem once she was on a plane to Mexico,” Peterkin said after interviewing the girl.

That was the last her mother, Wanda Pevia, knew until earlier this month, when Dana showed up at the U.S. Consulate General’s office in Guadalajara.

The girl tried to escape several times, he said, but each time, the family found her and brought her back to their home — at least once at gunpoint.