The investigation into a 5-year-old girl who was abandoned at a bus terminal in New York City led police to find her mother's body in Stamford on Monday, according to police, and they are looking for her father in connection with the homicide.
Police said they are looking for the girl’s father, Elmer Gomez Ruono, 32, for questioning. They believe he killed the mother, then dropped the little girl off at the police station around 8:30 a.m., based on what they saw on surveillance video.
The girl was found at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Times Square at 10:12 a.m. Monday and New York authorities instructed police in Stamford to do a welfare check on the girl's mother in Stamford, where they found 24-year-old Dionicia Bautista-Cano dead on the third floor of 388 Courtland Ave.
Police have not said how she was killed.
Police said Bautista-Cano and her child, who speaks Spanish, moved from New Jersey and in with Ruono sometime over the weekend. The woman is a Guatemalan national, police said.
The couple, who married in Guatamala in 2008, had been separated, and Gomez Ruono moved to the country first.
Bautista-Cano moved later and there was a get together in the apartment on Sunday night and detectives believe an argument led to a struggle and Bautista-Cano was killed.
Stamford Police are investigating the homicide and police hope to speak with the girl to determine if she witnessed the homicide, but investigators said they are being very delicate with her because she mother was killed and her father is a suspect.
She is in custody of the Connecticut Department of Children and Family Services.
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Bautista-Cano's husband has not been located yet.