The family of a missing 12-year-old girl is trying to use a phone app to track her down.

Maryandy Santana was last seen by her family on Tuesday around 9 a.m. when she left for school.

One of Maryandy's classmates told her mother, Rosa Santana, that the girl had gone to Brooklyn with a man, possibly under duress. The friend said Maryandy had told her she "can get hurt" if she did not accompany him.

The girl's older brother says he took her smartphone away Tuesday morning, before her disappearance, and was able to plug it into a computer and retrieve messages from the Kik Messenger app.

Kik allows users to make up their own screen names rather than tracking messages by phone number or real identity, but the family has turned the messages over to police and hopes they will lead to Maryandy's whereabouts.