Police searching for a missing six-year-old disabled boy have dug up a concrete patio installed by his mum amid fears the little lad is dead.
Noel Rodriguez-Alvarez, 6, was last seen in October and is sadly believed to be dead after his mother flew to India along with six other children.
Cindy Rodriguez-Singh has given various stories to police to explain her son's absence, and her family even said she had told them she sold him.
But the fact that the boy's mother purchased and installed a large and elaborate concrete patio on someone else's property was seen as unusual by the Everman Police Chief.
The initial search of the concrete patio at the home in Everman, which is located just south of Fort Worth, Texas, did not reveal anything.
But crews are conducting a thorough search to ensure that they do not miss anything.
Texas Search and Rescue assisted police with the search of the wooded areas to the east and north of the property where Noel’s family lived on Wisteria Drive.
"We have a vast array of resources to utilize on these kinds of cases," Todd Snyder with Texas Search and Rescue: TEXSAR, said, reported Fox News.
"Anything that looks suspicious, that looks out of place that could be an evidentiary item. We are taking our time with being very thorough in the searches."
Everman Police Chief Craig Spencer noted: "She doesn’t own the home. We find that very odd that she would spend her funds on somebody else’s home to put in a concrete patio, especially one as large and as elaborate as this.
"When we came out the first time, we didn’t do a complete search of the whole patio with the ground penetrating radar. It did not reveal anything new.
".However, we know this ground penetrating radar is not 100%. So we are being thorough, making sure we aren’t missing anything."
But the owner of the property, Charles Parson, suggested that the child is still alive, and that police are only digging up his land out of "frustration".
He said: "I kept telling them, the slab was poured after Noel supposedly had disappeared. Why would he be underneath the slab?
"I think they just tore it up because they, they don't have no idea where he is, and they're frustrated."
And Chief Spencer indicated that there aren't any solid leads on the investigation as of yet.
"There hasn’t been any physical evidence to lead us to an exact location yet. This is just where we are starting," he said. "They’re searching for anything and everything that could potentially be linked including Noel himself."
Chief Spencer said that Mrs Rodriguez-Singh “has been known by relatives to be abusive and neglectful to Noel.”
Also, he said, investigators learned through interviews that Mrs Rodriguez-Singh had referred to Noel as “evil, possessed or having a demon in him” and believed he would harm his siblings.
Police have said that Noel suffers from numerous physical and developmental challenges.
“Relatives and witnesses stated that food and water were often withheld from Noel because Cindy did not like changing Noel's dirty diapers,” Chief Spencer said. “A relative even witnessed Cindy strike Noel in the face with keys because he drank water.”
Spencer said that on November 1, 2022, Mrs Rodriguez-Singh got passport photos for all of the children living with her except for Noel. And then, the next day, she applied for passports for herself and all of the children except for Noel.
In November, Mrs Rodriguez-Singh began to try to explain Noel's absence with “various stories,” including that he was either with his biological father or aunt in Mexico, or that she'd sold him to a woman in a grocery store parking lot, according to the police.
Chief Spencer noted that investigators have looked into all of those stories and none were true.
Mrs Rodriguez-Singh, and her husband, Arshdeep Singh, are believed to have flown to India on March 22 along with six children.
Two days earlier, police had been asked by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to do a welfare check on the children at the couple's home and the 6-year-old wasn't present.