Police in Austin, Texas, are searching for a 9-year-old girl who vanished in 2017 after her 7-year-old sister was found “locked in a closet and starving,” authorities said.
Police received a 911 call on April 3 regarding a 7-year-old who was found in the closet of a home in Del Valle. Six other children were found in the home and “appeared physically healthy,” Russell Constable, with the Austin Police Department, said at a news conference Tuesday.
The 7-year-old was taken to the hospital and is recovering.
During an investigation, detectives learned that another child, Ava Marie Gonzales, was missing from the home. Authorities said Ava was last seen by family and friends in December 2017 when she was 2 years old. She was in the custody of her mother, Virginia Gonzales, police said in a news release.
Constable said Gonzales gave “conflicting information” to family members about Ava, and investigators have not been able to locate the child’s father.
He pleaded with the public for help.
“We don’t know where she is right now, and that’s what we’re trying to figure out, her current status, where she is, who she’s with, and if she’s safe and healthy,” he said.
Constable said Ava was never reported missing and authorities are “seriously concerned about Ava’s welfare given the circumstances in which Ava’s 7-year-old sibling was found.”
Police released photos of Ava at 2 years old as well as an age-progressed image of her.
The mother was arrested on April 24 on a charge of serious injury to a child related to the 7-year-old, police said. An arrest affidavit said the girl was found by her grandmother and was “malnourished, soiled and barricaded in a bedroom closet,” NBC affiliate KXAN of Austin reported.
The grandmother told police that the other children were allegedly forced to lock the 7-year-old in the closet because she was always trying to eat things she was not supposed to, according to the news station. One of the children said the 7-year-old was allegedly fed a hot dog or a corndog in the morning and given half a cup of water to drink.
The closet was about 4 feet 9 inches by 1 foot 10 inches and had boxes weighing over 75 pounds in front of it, KXAN reported. Police don’t believe any of the children were enrolled in school.
Gonzales is being held at the Travis County Correctional Complex on a $75,000 bond, online jail records show.
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