EL PASO, Texas -- What was supposed to be a celebration turns to sadness and anger after a dancehall booked for a graduation party months in advance unexpectedly closed. Melody Garcia’s daughter wanted to be around her family and friends to celebrate her graduation. “She has sacrificed a lot this past five years to go to college. She has always asked me for a party for her graduation,” Garcia said.

So months in advance her mom, Melody Garcia made arrangements with Moonlight Banquet Hall in northeast El Paso, but just days before the ballroom closed its doors after taking more than $1,000 of the Garcias' money.

“I said, ‘ You can’t do that. We need to have the party. We have people coming in from out of town.’ I would call one person and he would say, ‘No you need to talk to that person’ and that person would say, ‘You need to talk to him.’ They gave us the runaround,” Garcia told KFOX.

We checked the Moonlight Hall’s record with Better Business Bureau. There were no problems. KFOX went to speak with the manager Mike Fino. He said, “Basically they tell us they are doing a lockout because we are seven days late on our rent.” Fino was told once the rent was paid, they would get their keys back. They paid the rent, but never got the keys, and were forced to turn over all of their contracts.

“We agreed to sign everything over; we gave them our contracts in good faith. The deal was that they would honor our contracts,” Fino said.

But the Garcia family said that’s not happening. “It is supposed to be a very joyful time for her. She has been looking forward to this day. ”

KFOX contacted the landlord the manager said he turned the contract over to, he released this statement this afternoon.

“The owner of Moonlight Hall were locked out due to a failure to pay money owed to the owner of Surety Village Shopping Center. The owner of the shopping center has nothing to do with the business of Moonlight Hall and the owner of the center was never given any contracts and so, has no responsibility to host events at Moonlight Hall. All responsibility for this matter should be directed towards the owners of the Hall.”

The Garcia family was able to find another ballroom New Mexico to have their celebration.