Purported tryst runs out of cash

A teacher accused of running away with a 13-year-old student planned a romantic life with him in his native Mexico, but she was nearly broke when they were captured there.

Their border crossing during a week on the run may mean the teen, an illegal immigrant, will not be able to come back to the rural Nebraska town of Lexington, where he was an eighth-grader.

The boy’s relatives told police he had called home asking for money, leading investigators to a shopping mall in the border city of Mexicali. Kelsey Peterson, 25, and Fernando Rodriguez, 13, were taken into custody without incident in the parking lot.

Peterson, a sixth-grade math teacher and basketball coach at Lexington Middle School, fled with the boy after police began investigating whether the pair had an intimate relationship.