Police search for missing toddler after mother's body found in NY

SODUS, N.Y. — Police in western New York issued an Amber Alert on Friday for a missing 14-month-old boy whose mother's body had been found in a plastic bag hidden in the woods two days earlier.

According to the alert, the child, Owen Hidalgo-Calderon, was last seen May 16 — the same day his mother, Selena Hidalgo-Calderon, was last seen before her body was found Wednesday morning.

"The child was taken under circumstances that lead the police to believe that he is in imminent danger of serious harm and/or death," the alert said.

The child is described as a Hispanic male, 14 months old, with short brown hair and brown eyes. He is approximately 2 feet, weighs about 30 pounds and needs asthma medication. Police did not have a description of the clothing Owen was wearing at the time.

The body of 18-year-old Selena Hidalgo-Calderon was found at a farm in the Wayne County town of Sodus where she and her boyfriend, 25-year-old Edward Reyes, worked. The body was between two logs and covered with soil and branches.

Reyes, caught on a hunter's trail camera going in and out of the woods with a shovel, was arrested Wednesday night on charges of tampering with physical evidence. He has admitted to burying the woman but not killing her, Wayne County Sheriff Barry Virts said.

Reyes was being held on $25,000 bail in the Wayne County Jail pending a court appearance May 29. Virts said he is working with authorities in Mexico, where Reyes is from, to learn more about him and if he has a criminal record. He is not the missing child's father.

At one point while the mother and child were missing, relatives indicated that Hidalgo-Calderon and Reyes, who lived together, may have run off because of their immigration status, the sheriff's office said, but checks of surrounding train and bus stations had turned up nothing.

Rebecca Fuentes of the Workers' Center of Central New York told the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle that Hidalgo-Calderon was from Guatemala and had been seeking asylum.

"I don't care about your race, creed, color, national origin or religion," Virts said at a news conference. "If you are a victim, we will fight for you, we will triumph for you. If you are a perpetrator and you have abused somebody, we are going to hunt you down."

Hidalgo-Calderon had been in the U.S. since November 2016, according to the Workers' Center.

"My daughter and my grandson were my life," her mother, Estela Calderon, said in a statement issued by the center. "She was my firstborn and I feel like a piece of my heart is gone."

Anyone with any information should call the Wayne County Sheriff's Department at (866) NYS-AMBER or dial 911.

In New York, Amber Alerts are handled by the State Police, which writes the alert and sends it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. NCMEC then immediately broadcasts the information on local television and radio stations, and sends a 90-character alert to any cell phones located in the search area.

The alert on Friday was mistakenly sent to cell phones statewide, instead of the immediate search area, State Police spokesman Beau Duffy said.

The message told people to "check your local media," which led to confusion for people living far from Sodus — a town near Lake Ontario, east of Rochester — where the alert was already being broadcast, Duffy said.

"Of course, we'd love to avoid people in Long Island, for example, seeing an alert to go to their local media" when the issue is not in their area, Duffy said. Capital Region media, including the Times Union, published or broadcast information on the alert after it had been sent to area cell phones.

Duffy said NCMEC told the State Police on Friday that the non-profit has fixed the technical issue that caused the alert to be sent to all state regions.