PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — It’s been three years since Dulce Alavez went missing from South Jersey’s Bridgeton City Park. Now, she is 8 years old.
Not a whole lot of information about the investigation has been released by officials, but the search is long from over.
Family and members of the community are holding an observance Friday night in the same park. A tree in the playground has become a dedication to Dulce, where they meet and remember the girl who was last seen when she was just 5.
Dulce and her younger brother were near the swings that day. Her mother was in a car parked on the nearby lot. When she realized Dulce was gone, she called 911. Investigators quickly came to the conclusion that she was abducted.
The Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office said investigators have conducted hundreds of interviews and traveled to 11 different states and Mexico in the search for Dulce.
Investigators released a sketch of a man in 2019 that they still believe is a person of interest.
“Although three years is an incredibly sad milestone, it certainly doesn’t stop the fight in searching for her and working tirelessly to find her safely and quickly,” said John Bischoff, vice president of the missing children division of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
He said the young girl’s family has taken a lot of heat since her disappearance.
“We haven’t walked in that family’s shoes,” he emphasized, “and each of us pray that we don’t have to walk in those shoes. So we don’t know how we’ll react when our child goes missing. We do know that the family was talking to law enforcement, and that’s what’s most important.”
Officials are still asking the public for tips — in fact, they got one earlier this month. Anything could help, they stress, even something seemingly insignificant.
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The next time you see a picture of a missing child, Bischoff said, stop and look.
“When you walk by Dulce’s poster or any poster of a child missing, stop for a second. Just look at that image. Because that’s what’s going to help find that child,” he said. “We want her found quick, we want to know where she is, and we want to know that she’s safe.”