Police said a teenage girl who said she was abducted while walking to a school bus stop Tuesday morning knew the man she was discovered with in a motel room eight hours later. 

Jade Beneby, 17, was whisked inside her home by family members late Tuesday night, but whether she told them how or why she ended up in the motel room 55 miles away remains unclear. 

Police said her run-in with a man at the bus stop early Tuesday morning wasn't a random encounter. 

"I've been told by the detective sergeant that there is some type of link between the suspect and victim, and what we wanted the community to know is that there isn't a random person out there grabbing children when they are at the bus stops and putting them in the car," said Delray Beach police spokeswoman Sgt. Nicole Gurreiro. 

Beneby set off a statewide search after she sent text messages to her mother saying she was in trouble and in the trunk of a silver car. Florida Department of Law Enforcement agents found her at about 2:30 p.m. Tuesday at the El Paraiso motel on Okeechobee Road in Hialeah, from where they towed a silver Mercedes. 

Police have interviewed the man she was with. They won't say who he is, how old he is or how the two knew each other, but they are calling him a suspect. 

"We are investigating fully as an abduction. In that case we would consider him a suspect because of the allegations that she made," said Gurreiro.