Why would Karol Sanchez fake her own kidnapping?

On a ride to New York from Philly, my iPhone’s Amber Alert begins to chime, meaning everyone around me with an iPhone’s alarms simultaneously join the jarring chorus, abruptly ending the blissful silence of the ride.

After tapping the alert to disappointing receive no additional information, I return to Instagram to see a grainy black and white video from a street surveillance camera. The video shows a young woman walking with her mother on the street, umbrellas up, minding their business when the young woman is suddenly grabbed by four men, two who snatched her and 2 in the front seats and thrown into a sedan, snatched from her mother in a residential Bronx neighborhood on Monday night.

This young woman is 16-year-old Karol Sanchez.

Part of me is angry that I received that Amber Alert over 12 hours following her kidnapping. Why weren’t we all alerted sooner? Why weren’t more people alerted to the literal snatching of this young woman? Why weren’t more people in outrage about it?

Maybe because attacks and disappearances like Karol’s are all too common. According to Refinery29, “This is, unfortunately, following a string of recent attacks on young women in the New York area. The video from New York’s 40th precinct, which was posted on Twitter, shows the men appear from out of nowhere…