In their continued search for missing 6-year-old Noel Rodriguez-Alvarez, investigators found signs that human remains might have been present in a shed on the property where the boy’s family lived.
The search for Rodriguez-Alvarez began on March 20, as reported in The Dallas Express, in response to a tip from a family member who said they had not seen the boy since November.
Following the welfare check, officials put out an AMBER alert on March 25. Investigators now say they have moved into a death investigation for the boy, as covered by The Dallas Express.
Cindy Rodriguez-Singh, the boy’s mother, was reportedly inconsistent in her explanation of where her son was. She allegedly offered the explanation that her son was sold to a woman in a parking lot at one point. Later she said Rodriguez-Alvarez was living with his biological father in Mexico, who authorities later determined had never met the boy because he had been deported before he was born.
Police learned later that night that Rodriguez-Alvarez’s mother, her husband Arshdeep Singh, and six of her children boarded a flight to India with a short stop in Istanbul.
Everman Police Chief Craig Spencer said he believes that Rodriguez-Singh knows her son’s whereabouts.
“We’re on three, four weeks of this since this case started. She’s been out of the country. Surely, she knows this is going on,” said Spencer, per Fox 4 News. “She knows we’re looking for Noel. And had there not been anything suspicious or had there been a reasonable explanation, you would’ve thought somebody would’ve reached out and told us that. We haven’t had that contact.”
Earlier in the investigation, police learned of a large indoor/outdoor carpet that Arshdeep Singh had discarded in a dumpster just before the family left the country. The covering, according to a press release from the Everman Police Department, sat directly on the ground inside a makeshift shed that once stood on the property.
On Monday, canines trained to find human remains alerted police to the recovered carpet. This discovery helped direct police to refocus their investigation on an “unpermitted and suspicious” concrete backyard patio that Rodriguez-Singh paid to have poured just before the family’s departure abroad. The patio stood where the shed had once been.
Part of the patio was excavated early in the investigation, but no remains were found at the time. However, after the canines alerted to the carpet thrown away by Singh, investigators obtained a search warrant to excavate the entire patio.
When the canines were brought back to the scene after parts of the patio were removed, they alerted officers to the topsoil beneath, per the department’s press release. After anthropologists removed 18 to 24 inches of topsoil on Tuesday, the dogs no longer alerted officers to the patio area but to the piles of displaced topsoil.
This gave Everman Police reason to suspect that human remains were once in the shed but were later removed.
Despite the small amount of physical evidence found, officials said it helps guide the focus of their ongoing investigation.
