What to Know
- Dive teams are using sonar to search White Rock Lake a day after the body of a missing woman's boyfriend was pulled from the water.
- Authorities pulled the body of Alfonso Hernandez, 28, from White Rock Lake Sunday morning. His car was found abandoned at the lake Feb. 5.
- The couple's two children were reunited with family Sunday, a CPS spokesperson says.
The search at Dallas' White Rock Lake for a woman missing since Feb. 5 is being suspended.
Dive teams were back on the lake Monday morning searching for 26-year-old Weltzin Garcia, who was reported missing along with her boyfriend, 28-year-old Alfonso Hernandez, earlier this month. Hernandez's body was found in the lake Sunday morning. NBC 5 confirmed there were no obvious signs of trauma, though his cause of death was still being determined by the Dallas County Medical Examiner.
Dallas police will continue to fly their helicopter over the lake, looking for signs of Garcia, but the dive team only planned to return if something was spotted. In the meantime, officers planned to search other areas between the lake and Grand Prairie that the pair may have been, using information taken from cell phone pings.
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Texas Game Wardens and the Dallas Police Department's dive team used three boats equipped with sonar to scan the lake, but so far have turned up no additional clues. Areas of the lake that are too narrow for boats were searched on foot and with metal detectors, police said.
They started searching at 8 a.m. Monday near the spillway where Hernandez's body was recovered. Dive team members said with the way the current was flowing, they were confident he drifted to that area. From there, they moved north, combing over the section of water surrounding where his car was found abandoned nearly two weeks ago.
The search was called off at about 2 p.m.
Dallas police confirmed to NBC 5 they were able to obtain mobile phone records for both Garcia and Hernandez and that both phones have pinged near White Rock Lake.
Garcia's twin, Atziry Garcia Mireles, told NBC 5 Monday morning that her sister's phone was found in Hernandez's pocket. His phone, police said, was found in his car.
Mireles is currently caring for Garcia and Hernandez's two children, ages 3 and 6. She said while both miss their mother, the youngest keeps getting confused seeing his mother's identical twin.
"He's thinking I'm his mom, but he's little you know. He's calling me mommy every time so it's like very emotional for me, but I'm not gonna break down because I need to be strong for them and they need to know that everything is going to be okay," Mireles said.
The children had been in the custody of CPS while the search for their parents was underway. Mireles asked a judge on Friday for custody of the children and they were reunited with family members Sunday night after Hernandez's body was pulled from the lake.
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Family members said Friday that Garcia and Hernandez had relationship issues and that Hernandez had sought treatment for anger management. Mireles said Monday that he recently threatened to take his own life after a fight with Garcia.
"I know he had some suicide thoughts, but not this. I still do not understand why he'd do that to his family, to his kids. We don't know why," she said.
Grand Prairie police confirmed there was a warrant out for Hernandez's arrest, related to a January domestic assault incident involving Garcia.
Mireles said she's still holding out hope her sister will be found safe, leaning on her "twin sense" for comfort.
"I can feel when my sister is crying, so I know she's alive," she said.
But she remains torn, with few answers to the many questions her family holds.
"I just want answers because we don't know what's going on. I mean, were is she? Is she hiding? Is she dead?" Mireles asked.
NBC 5's Tim Ciesco, Vanessa Brown and Frank Heinz contributed to this report.
