Where Are New Jersey’s Missing Children? | Hoboken, NJ Patch – Patch.com
NEW JERSEY — Authorities and loved ones have never stopped searching for many of the 63 children listed as missing from New Jersey in the database of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Of those children, 14 are listed as having gone missing in 2020 or 2021 (see their photos and information below).
Meanwhile, authorities still haven’t located little Dulce Alvarez, a then-5-year-old girl who disappeared in 2019 while playing in a park in Cumberland County with her younger brother. READ MORE: FBI: Leads Emerging In Amber Alert Probe For 5-Year-Old NJ Girl
In that well-publicized case, a single mother, Noema Alvarez Perez, 19, let her two children, Dulce and her 3-year-old brother, out of her car to play in a Bridgeton park on Sept. 16, 2019. She stayed in the vehicle for a few moments to help her younger sister with homework.
When she got out of the vehicle, she said, the brother was crying and pointing. Dulce was gone.
“Please don’t give up on my daughter,” Noema pleaded in a statement in 2019, after police asked the public not to judge her or spread rumors about the case.
An FBI investigator in the case told Patch last September that he believes the case will be solved with help and tips from the community. More photos of Dulce are below and here.
Below are the 14 New Jersey cases from 2021 and 2020, with most recent first. Click each name to see the child’s poster.
Beyond that is a list of cases of children under 12, one of which goes back to the 1960s. Among them are brother and sister Krish and Kashvi Chawda, taken from Edison in 2013.
Call 911 or 1-800-THE-LOST if you have information.
Have you seen them?
2021
2020
- Keylin Garnica-Paz, Dec. 14, Trenton, 17
- Xamavi Wilson, Dec. 6, Bloomfield, 16
- Ajanae Lemons, Sept. 11, Trenton, 18
- Sara Zuniga, July 16, Newark, 15
- Tamaj Bennett, July 14, Pleasantville, 16
- Walter Chocoj-Balan, July 10, North Bergen, 17
- Keyli Rosa-Chavez, April 30, Newark, 17
- Elijah Lee, March 6, Wayne, 18
- Pedro Ixcotoyac Pu, Feb. 14, Fairview, 18
- Maynor Lopez Castro, Jan. 3, Morristown, 18
Younger children, 1962-2019
While most of the recent missing children cases are teens, there are 15 kids age 12 and under in the database from New Jersey, whose cases span 1962 through 2019.
Here are their photos:
Last five years
And here are the eight still-open cases of children who’ve gone missing from five years ago (April 2015) through 2019:
There’s hope
Last month, law enforcement agencies in the Philadelphia area recovered 16 missing children, some of whom were believed to be involved with sex trafficking, authorities said.
The non-profit National Center for Missing and Exploited Children recommends that if your child goes missing, call 911 or your local law enforcement agency. Click here for more information.
The NCMEC was founded in 1984 and works with families, victims, law enforcement, industry, and the public to assist with preventing child abductions, recovering missing children, and providing services to deter and combat child sexual exploitation.
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