Creative Commons License

A steady flow of visitors come to place their offerings at the memorial stretched along the front of the abandoned home where the remains of 12-year-old Jacqueline “Mimi” Torres Garcia were found in New Britain, Connecticut on Oct. 14, 2025. Credit: Joe Amon / Connecticut Public

A Department of Children and Families social worker on Thursday testified she was told multiple times Jacqueline “Mimi” Torres-García was visiting an aunt in Virginia, leading her to arrange the Zoom call with a woman who is now known to have impersonated the child, months before Torres-García was found dead in New Britain.

During probable cause hearings this week in the case of Jonatan Nanita, the ex-boyfriend of Torres-García’s mother, a now 22-year-old woman testified that she pretended to be Mimi, who would have been 12 years old, on Zoom in February 2025 at the request of the child’s mother, Karla García.

Judge Robert D’Andrea, who presided over the hearings, will determine next month whether there is probable cause to move forward with some or all of the charges against Nanita, who is facing 10 felony charges in Litchfield County, including murder. He also has a second case pending in New Britain County for three separate charges.

Police found Torres-García’s body in a plastic container behind an abandoned house in October. Her mother, Nanita and the child’s aunt have all been charged in relation to her death, which officials have said occurred in 2024. The case has also prompted a lawsuit against DCF on behalf of her estate for $100 million.

On Thursday, the DCF worker, Shannon Hargrove, testified that she has been with the department for about a decade, as a social worker and an intake social worker.

Hargrove told the court that she came to the family’s home to investigate a complaint on New Year’s Eve 2024. There was no response on that initial visit, but Hargrove said that a few days later she was able to make contact with Torres-García’s mother, Karla García, who was pregnant at the time. Investigators now believe that Torres-García had been dead for months when this visit took place.

Hargrove testified that García told her Torres-García was visiting an aunt in Virginia. Soon after that visit, another report came in to DCF, this time from Torres-García’s sister’s school, reporting that the girl had a bruise on her face.

Hargrove said that because Torres-García wasn’t the child identified in either of the reports, she was not required under DCF’s rules to see her. Nevertheless, Hargrove asked García multiple times when Torres-García would return from Virginia.

On one occasion, García gave her a date of return only to say that it had been cancelled because of the birth of her fifth child. That struck Hargrove as reasonable, according to her testimony. The second time she asked about Torres-García’s return, “I was told the car wasn’t working, so Karla would have to go to Virginia to get her,” Hargrove testified. “And then the third time, I knew she was actively making arrangements to move back to New Britain, and she had asked the aunt to keep her until she settled into the new place. And by that point, I asked for all the information for this aunt so that I can speak with her directly.”

On Valentine’s Day, Hargrove held a video call with a person she believed to be Torres-García. That person was revealed this week to be a woman in her early 20s who had been asked by Karla to impersonate the child. The woman testified she did not know Torres-García was dead at the time.

The case has reinforced calls for more regulation of the state’s homeschooling system. In July 2024, the girl’s mother emailed school officials to alert them she planned to homeschool her daughter. Less than two months later, the child was dead, according to court records.

On Thursday, the assistant superintendent of finance and operations for the Farmington School District, Daniel Zittoun, testified that Torres-García’s younger sister was enrolled in Farmington schools via an online form, allowing biographical information and images of her to be shared. But, he said, García marked Torres-García as homeschooled on the same form, and also indicated that she did not consent to biographical information or images to be shared of her oldest child.

A report from the medical examiner found that Torres-García’s cause of death was starvation.

Nanita’s attorney told D’Andrea on Thursday that he should not be considered liable in Torres-García’s murder because she was under her mother’s care and there is not sufficient evidence to suggest that Nanita took part in the decision to starve her to death. D’Andrea said he needed more time to consider the matter and set another hearing date for Feb. 13.

Lawmakers say they are keeping the case top of mind as they consider funding and oversight of DCF when the 2026 legislative session begins next week.

Laura Tillman is CT Mirror’s Human Services Reporter. She shares responsibility for covering housing, child protection, mental health and addiction, developmental disabilities, and other vulnerable populations. Laura began her career in journalism at the Brownsville Herald in 2007, covering the U.S.–Mexico border, and worked as a statehouse reporter for the Associated Press in Mississippi. She was most recently a producer of the national security podcast “In the Room with Peter Bergen” and is the author of two nonfiction books: The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts (2016) and The Migrant Chef: The Life and Times of Lalo Garcia (2023), which was just awarded the 2024 James Beard Award for literary writing. Her freelance work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. Laura holds a degree in International Studies from Vassar College and an MFA in nonfiction writing from Goucher College.