Parents of a missing 6-year-old boy from Everman are now facing felony child abandonment charges after police spent the week searching the family's rented home for additional clues in his disappearance, including digging up part of a newly poured concrete porch.
Everman Chief of Police CW Spencer said the boy's mother, Cindy Rodriguez-Singh, and her husband, fled the country for India with her six other children two days after officers performed a welfare check on the young boy.
Investigators said relatives reported they had not seen the child since November 2022. During that welfare check, Rodriguez-Singh reportedly told police that her son, 6-year-old Noel Rodriguez-Alvarez, was with his father in Mexico.
Spencer said investigators have talked to the boy's father several times and he said his son is not with him. Spencer said, at this point, they have no reason to doubt the father's statements and that the father has reached out to them as well for updates on the case involving his missing son.
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On Thursday investigators executed search warrants at the family's rented home, which is a large shed at the back of another property that had been converted into a living space. The chief added that the conditions of the family's home are part of the arrest warrant and couldn't elaborate on the state of the home before investigators performed their search -- which he described as "thorough."
Spencer said investigators turned their focus to a concrete porch that had been recently poured on the property after they learned it had been paid for by the renter and not the property owner. Spencer said cadaver dogs didn't alert near the porch and that while ground penetrating radar did detect an anomaly underneath the slab nothing was found after they dug into the area.
"Ultimately our teams did not locate any evidence as a result of that dig that would lead us to finding Noel," Spencer said.
The chief added that other evidence supporting their investigation was found at the home, but he wouldn't elaborate on what it was. He did say no evidence has been found that would indicate the boy has died.
"I want to be very clear to this day we still don't have any evidence that would suggest that Noel is deceased. So I just want to be clear there we are still pursuing every avenue possible with this investigation," Spencer said.
Spencer said the charges of abandoning or endangering a child filed against the boy's mother and stepfather are second-degree felonies and that now that they have been filed they can work with federal partners to locate and extradite the couple back to the United States.
"We are truly concerned about Noel's physical and medical well-being, along with the safety of his siblings in India."
Police are asking anyone with information about the boy or his family to call the police and that any time, no matter how insignificant it may seem, could help them in the case.
