A little boy was found sleeping on a stranger’s porch Monday and his parents haven’t made contact with their family since Sunday, police say. Authorities then found a burning vehicle around a mile away from where the boy was found.
According to ABC 7, authorities found a burned-out vehicle on Tonawanda Street in Buffalo, New York, on Monday evening, possibly with deceased people inside. The vehicle was burned so badly that investigators still have not been to identify the make and model. Around a mile away, 3-year-old Noelvin was found on a stranger’s porch off of Potomac Avenue early Monday morning. The woman who found the boy said he kept repeating, “the car’s on fire.”
Lois Augsburger told police she found Noelvin inside a cardboard box on the porch, wrapped in a blanket and wearing only a pull-up diaper.
“I come out the door and I open this up and I just happened to look down and I see him starting to crawl out,” Augsburger said. “He was crawling out of the box. He heard me. He must’ve heard me open the door and he came crawling out of the box and he had the blanket around him and I picked him up and I hugged him.”
A family from #Florida meets the women who helped a little boy found on a porch in #Buffalo Monday. @BPDAlerts is looking for the boy's parents & a family friend who are missing from the #Orlando area. I'll have the latest on all of this tonight at 10&11. @FOX29Buffalo @WGRZ pic.twitter.com/ONrqXSaln2
— Kelly Dudzik (@kellydudzikWGRZ) September 17, 2019
So far, police have not been able to make the connection between Noelvin and the burning car.
Noelvin’s grandmothers flew in from Florida to pick him up and told authorities that his parents are Nicole Merced Plaud, 24, and Miguel Anthony Valentin-Colon, 31, of Longwood, Florida.
Now, the grandmothers are scared that the remains inside the car were Noelvin’s parents. They said it’s unlike the couple to not communicate with family, according to NBC’s KXAN.
“His parents loved him very much and were always with him,” grandmother Zenaida Colon said. “They were great parents. They come from good families. My son’s a truck driver. The wife is a stay-at-home mom.”
Noelvin is now being cared for by Child Protective Services but the grandmothers are hoping to get custody while officials try to determine who was inside the car and why it caught on fire.
Relatives said they had no idea the family was going out of state to New York but added that it wasn’t unusual since they are known to take road trips, the Journal-News reports.
Noelvin’s grandfather, Jorge Oquendo, told the outlet he had mixed feelings over the incident. When the family tried to call Miguel’s phone on Sunday, it kept going straight to voicemail, he said.
“We’re all devastated,” Oquendo said. “We’re all devastated for a lot of reasons. We have no answers, we don’t know what happened, we don’t know if it happened.”
Buffalo police Capt. Jeff Rinaldo said it may take a while before officials can identify who was inside the burning vehicle.
“We will not know the identities of the people found in the vehicle for quite some time,” he said during a Tuesday news conference.
Anyone who witnessed anything or saw smoke or fire in the area should call homicide detectives at (716) 851-4466.
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[Feature Photo: Noelvin/Handout]