Human remains found at a Texas property this week have been confirmed to be those of a missing boy last seen in 2022, the Tarrant County district attorney said Friday.
The identification of the remains found in the town of Everman on Thursday is confirmation of the sad fate of Noel Rodriguez-Alvarez, who was 6 years old.
The boy’s mother, Cindy Rodriguez Singh, is charged with capital murder. She went to India two days after Everman police tried to conduct a welfare check. She was apprehended there in August, months after she was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List, and brought back to Texas.
Police announced a search for Noel in April 2023 and said that the boy had not been seen by some extended family members since October 2022.
Everman police visited the family’s home on March 20, 2023, after the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services requested a welfare check, police said.
At the time, the mother told officers Noel was staying with family in Mexico, which Everman’s then-Police Chief Craig Spencer has said was later determined to be untrue.
Two days later, Rodriguez Singh, her husband and six of her children got on a plane bound for India, police said. Noel was not with them.
Rodriguez Singh was charged in absentia in October 2023 with a state count of capital murder.
She was being held at the Lon Evans Corrections Center in Fort Worth, according to county jail records.
Her case did not appear to be in online Tarrant County court records Friday night, and it was not immediately clear if she had an attorney who could speak on her behalf.
Tarrant County District Attorney Phil Sorrells said Thursday when remains were found that a psychologist found Rodriguez Singh not competent to stand trial, but that it was it was expected her competency could be restored. He said she will stand trial.
Sorrells said in a video message Friday that the county medical examiner’s office confirmed that the remains found at the family’s former home are those of the child.
“Here at the district attorney’s office, we will continue to seek justice for Noel,” Sorrells said Friday. “We owe that to him and to the citizens of Tarrant County.”
Sorrels’ statement did not disclose the cause and manner of death. Dental records were used to identify the remains, he said.
Everman is a city of around 6,100 within the Fort Worth area, about 8 miles south of downtown Fort Worth.
