Neighbor Speaks Out: The Heartbreaking Footage of Mimi Torres-Garcia’s Last Wave – A Ghostly Goodbye Caught on Camera

In the leafy confines of Farmington’s Wellington condominium complex, where security cameras blink like watchful eyes over quiet cul-de-sacs, Robert Harlan has lived for 22 years. A retired electrician in his late 60s, Harlan installed his own Ring doorbell system a decade ago, a simple precaution against the occasional porch pirate. It captured glimpses of neighborhood life: kids on bikes, dog walkers at dawn, and, for several months in 2024, the cheerful waves of an 11-year-old girl named Jacqueline “Mimi” Torres-Garcia. “She was like clockwork,” Harlan recalls, his voice cracking over coffee in his sunlit kitchen. “Every morning, backpack slung over one shoulder, she’d glance up at my camera and give this little finger-wiggle wave. Like we were old pals. Made my day.” But when Harlan revisited the footage last week—prompted by the flood of news about Mimi’s tragic death—he uncovered a gut-wrenching discrepancy: her final wave came a full day earlier than his memory had etched, on August 24, 2024. Two days before her official withdrawal from school, and weeks before the alleged abuse escalated into unimaginable horror.

Harlan’s revelation, shared first with Farmington detectives and now publicly in an exclusive interview, adds a tender yet tormenting chapter to the timeline of Mimi’s vanishing. It was a moment of innocence frozen in pixels, a child’s ritual of connection that now underscores the razor-thin line between everyday normalcy and concealed nightmare. “I thought it was the 25th, her last day of summer or something,” Harlan says, scrolling through archived clips on his tablet. The timestamp is unmistakable: 7:42 a.m., August 24—a Saturday, when school was still a distant drumbeat. Mimi, in her favorite purple hoodie and scuffed sneakers, pauses at the complex’s entrance, turns toward Harlan’s camera across the street, and waves. Not the half-hearted flap of a rushed kid, but a deliberate, sparkling hello, her dark curls bouncing as she grins. Then, she disappears around the corner, toward the bus stop that would take her to a friend’s house for a playdate, according to family logs later reviewed by police. Harlan watched it loop three times before the weight hit. “That was it. No more waves. I figured homeschooling, you know? Kids change routines. But now… Christ, that was her goodbye.”

The footage, a 15-second snippet Harlan handed over to investigators on October 25, has been folded into the sprawling evidentiary mosaic of the case against Mimi’s mother, Karla Roselee Garcia, 29; her boyfriend, Jonatan Abel Nanita, 30; and Karla’s sister, Jackelyn Garcia, 28. Unsealed warrants paint a portrait of calculated cruelty in the very condo where Mimi once waved: bound with zip ties for “discipline” after voicing upset over her mother’s pregnancy, starved for two weeks on a diet of nothing but water, her frail body—down to 27 pounds—succumbing in her bed sometime in mid-September 2024. Nanita allegedly dragged the remains to the basement, sealing them in a bleach-soaked plastic tote that the family hauled to a New Britain apartment in October, before dumping it behind the Clark Street eyesore on or around October 8, 2025—nearly a year later. Mimi’s homeschool enrollment, filed August 26, was the smokescreen: no more school sightings, no mandatory check-ins, just a ghost in the system.

Harlan’s camera, positioned at 142 Oakridge Drive—diagonally across from the Garcias’ unit at 138—unwittingly chronicled the prelude. Clips from May through August show Mimi’s routine in vibrant detail: dashing out at 7:40 a.m. for the mile-and-a-half trek to New Britain High’s middle school feeder, often pausing to chat with the complex’s stray cat or adjust her backpack stuffed with chapter books. “She’d talk to that camera sometimes,” Harlan chuckles through tears. “Once, she held up a drawing—a dragon with glasses. Said it was for ‘the old man watching TV all day.’ I waved back from my window.” Neighbors, in statements to police, corroborate the warmth: Mimi was the kid who shared sidewalk chalk, who organized impromptu games of tag among the condos’ patios. But by late summer, the waves grew sparser. July footage captures her alone more often, Nanita’s truck idling nearby as Karla loaded groceries—sans Mimi.

The August 24 clip stands alone, a solitary bloom in a withering garden. Police now believe it marks Mimi’s last “free” morning. Warrants detail the unraveling: on August 25, a family argument over Karla’s pregnancy announcement—Mimi, ever the sensitive soul, reportedly cried, “But I wanted a puppy, not a baby”—escalated into isolation. By the 26th, homeschool papers were submitted, and Mimi was confined to her room, the door locked from the outside. “That wave was her slipping away,” Harlan muses, zooming in on her face. “Eyes bright, no bruises yet. If I’d known…” His voice trails, echoing the chorus of regret from a community that glimpsed but didn’t grasp.

Harlan’s discovery didn’t come in isolation. Spurred by the October 8 body find and the viral #JusticeForMimi surge, he dusted off his archives amid a wave of neighbor soul-searching. The Wellington complex, a 1980s-era sprawl of 200 units off Scott Swamp Road, buzzed with noise complaints throughout fall 2024—four calls to Farmington PD between September and February 2025, per bodycam releases. Residents shared walls with the Garcias, hearing “yelling, thuds, a kid’s scream” on September 29, but chalked it up to domestic spats. One couple even tipped DCF about the younger sister lugging trash bags, but Mimi—homeschooled, invisible—evaded the net. Harlan, whose camera overlooked the shared driveway, caught shadows: Nanita hauling boxes on September 20, Karla pacing alone on October 5, the tote’s bulky outline vanishing into their minivan.

Reviewing it all now, Harlan spots the omens he missed. “August 24, she’s waving like tomorrow’s promised. By the 25th, nothing. I remember thinking, ‘Where’s the kid?’ But life moves.” Farmington PD’s Det. Sarah McKeown, lead on the case, confirmed the footage’s value in a statement: “Mr. Harlan’s archive provides critical context for the timeline, humanizing Jacqueline’s final days and bolstering our narrative of concealment.” It’s being cross-referenced with school records—Mimi’s last class on August 23—and Victor Torres’s custody logs, her father who last hugged her at June’s fifth-grade graduation.

The clip has pierced the broader reckoning. At the Clark Street memorial, where classmates’ mural now features a painted wave in Mimi’s honor, purple ribbons mingle with printed stills from Harlan’s feed. “She waved at us all,” reads a note pinned to a teddy bear. Social media amplifies the ache: a TikTok edit of the wave synced to The Girl Who Drank the Moon‘s audiobook has millions of views, captions pleading, “Her last hello—why didn’t we hear the silence?” Victor Torres, viewing the footage in a prosecutor’s office last week, broke down: “That’s my girl, still fighting to connect. I begged for visits; they said no. Now this… it’s all I have left waving back.”

Harlan’s story has galvanized calls for “Mimi’s Law,” the petition now at 28,000 signatures, pushing for camera-mandated reviews in homeschool cases and neighbor-reporting hotlines. Governor Ned Lamont nodded to it in yesterday’s address: “A child’s wave shouldn’t be her epitaph. We owe her vigilant eyes.” DCF, under fire for that January 2025 video call with a stand-in “Mimi,” launched an internal audit, promising in-person protocols by 2026.

For Harlan, the footage is both balm and blade. He replays it nightly, a ritual of what-ifs. “I waved back that morning, you know? From my porch coffee. She giggled— I could tell.” In the Wellington quiet, cameras still whir, but waves feel heavier now. Mimi’s last one, timestamped and true, whispers of a girl who reached out until she couldn’t. As trials approach, it’s a reminder: sometimes, the smallest gesture captures the biggest loss. Harlan plans to testify, frame in hand. “For Mimi,” he says. “So her wave echoes louder than the silence.”