Girl who disappeared without a trace at just 23-months-old 26 years ago found alive
Topics: US News, Crime, True crime
Poppy Bilderbeck
Featured Image Credit: DNA Solves
Topics: US News, Crime, True crime
A girl who disappeared at the age of nearly two-years-old has since been found over 25 years later.
In October 1999, Andrea Michelle Reyes, aged just 23 months, went missing from her father's home in New Haven, Connecticut, US.
Later that year, a felony warrant for custodial interference was issued for the arrest of her non-custodial mother, Rosa Tenorio Andrea.
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The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) states the last time anyone had contact with Andrea was on October 5, 1999, and it was believed Andrea had been taken by her mother to Puebla, Mexico.
Alongside a felony warrant for custodial interference being issued for Tenorio in 2009, another was allegedly issued in September, 2009.
However, the pair were never heard from and despite multiple agencies investigating - including the New Haven Department - she was never found and remained a missing person case in the NamUs, DNA Solves news release reports.
Multiple images of what Andrea would look like at various points growing up were generated - five listed on NamUs' website dating from 2010 to 2011 and 2014 - but it was to no avail.
In 2023, the case was reinvestigated by the New Haven Police Department and it led to a breakthrough - a woman reaching out to Andrea's father in the belief she was his daughter.
New Haven Police Department then worked alongside Othram - which offers in-house processing of evidence, from DNA extraction, enrichment, and repair, to sequencing and genealogy - to test whether the connection was real.
Police got a DNA sample from the woman which was then compared to Andrea's father's DNA profile using 'KinSNP® Rapid Relationship Testing'.
DNA Solves reveals: "This comparison supported a father/daughter relationship, confirming that the woman who reached out is, in fact, the nearly two-year-old girl kidnapped in October of 1999. Andrea Reyes, who is now 27 years old, resides in Mexico."
It's not publicly reported if Rosa Tenorio Andrea was located.
UNILAD has contacted NamUs and New Haven Police Department for comment.
The case is part of a wider project - titled Project 525 - led by Othram alongside the RTI research institute in charged of NamUs.
There are 525 juvenile cases published in NamUs - the project seeks to bring resolution to them all and Andrea's case makes a promising start, marking 'the seventh case in Connecticut' where the technology has been used to help publicly identify an individual.