A little boy was found sleeping inside a cardboard box on stranger’s porch on Monday, and police say his parents’ rental car was found torched with human remains inside around a mile away.
ABC Action News reports that Nicole Merced Plaud and her husband, Miguel Anthony Valentin-Colon, both of Florida, have not been heard from since Sunday. Their friend Dhamyl Mirella Roman-Audiffred has also vanished.
Buffalo, New York, resident Lois Augsburger found the couple’s 3-year-old little boy, Noelvin, sleeping inside a box on her front porch off of Potomac Avenue on Monday morning. Augsburger told police the boy was wrapped in a blanket and wearing only a pull-up diaper.
Developing: Lois Augsburger tells me she found a little boy asleep in this box (meant for the neighborhood cats) on the front porch of her Potomac home this morning when she came out to grab the paper. @BPDAlerts are still looking for his parents. @WKBW pic.twitter.com/rzNgjzgHSf
— Ali Touhey (@Ali2e) September 16, 2019
“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.”
“The car’s on fire.’ That’s all he kept saying,” Augsburger added, according to ABC Buffalo.
Video evidence obtained after the incident allowed Buffalo police to confirm that the torched vehicle found around a mile away from Potomac Avenue, off of Tonawanda Street, was connected to the missing couple. The pair rented a white Chrysler Pacifica SUV while still in Florida.
Authorities also spotted two unknown male adults on the security footage and they’re trying to determine who they are.
The video started with one a male walking toward Tonawanda Street at 2:54 a.m. Around seven minutes later, an explosion happened. A man and child are then seen running away from the vehicle. Another man appeared while holding a bag with gas cans.
Police said the vehicle caught on fire at around 3:01 a.m. on Monday morning. Buffalo authorities said that “two human beings burned in the vehicle.” However, the damage was so significant that it could take a while to make a positive identification. All three adults are still considered missing at this time.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, the couple, along with the little boy and their friend, had been traveling from Florida to New York.
Noelvin’s grandmothers traveled to Buffalo in an attempt to pick him up and told authorities that his parents are from Longwood, Florida. Family members were alerted that he was in Buffalo after authorities posted the boy’s photo on social media after no one initially came forward to claim him.
Relatives said when they didn’t hear from the family on Monday, they started checking social media after Valentin-Colon’s phone kept going straight to voicemail. Valentin-Colon’s sister spotted Noelvin’s photo online and the family immediately made plans to travel to Buffalo.
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 or why, but added that it wasn’t unusual since they are known to frequently take road trips, the Journal-News reports.
On Friday, however, officials said that more than four pounds of cocaine were found inside the hotel room that the parents were staying in, according to Buffalo News.
Police are asking the public to watch the videos carefully to see if the individuals look familiar. Further, anyone who saw a white Chrysler Pacifica SUV in the area or saw smoke or fire in the area should call Buffalo homicide detectives at (716) 851-4466.
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[Feature Photo: Noelvin/Handout]
