Background: New Castle County Police Department Public Information Officer Sgt. Andrea Botterbusch speaks to the media about the canceled Amber Alert for Nola Dinkins (WTTG). Inset: Nola Dinkins (New Castle County Police Department).
UPDATE: The Maryland State Police announced a significant development in the case of Nola Dinkins. They revealed that a body was found in Maryland’s Cecil County related to the investigation into Dinkins’ homicide. Authorities are currently working on positively identifying the recovered body.
Police in Delaware announced that they canceled an Amber Alert for a missing 3-year-old girl and have now begun investigating the case as a homicide.
During a media briefing covered by Washington, D.C.’s Fox affiliate WTTG, Sgt. Andrea Botterbusch, the Public Information Officer for the New Castle County Police Department, offered an update on the Amber Alert concerning 3-year-old Nola Dinkins. According to authorities, the child’s mother – whose identity remains undisclosed – falsely claimed her daughter had been kidnapped on Tuesday evening, reporting the alleged abduction around 7:15 p.m.
Less than 24 hours after the Amber Alert was issued for the little girl, police announced it was canceled.
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In a new release, Botterbusch stated that Nola’s mother initially told police that she had pulled over to the side of the road in front of an apartment complex in Newark, Delaware. The mother allegedly told police that as she attempted to calm Nola down, an unidentified white male approached them in their vehicle and threatened the mother with a gun. She claimed to police that the man took her daughter in a dark-colored SUV that was being driven by a white female and fled.
Investigators with the New Castle County Division of Police Criminal Investigations Unit, as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, searched for Nola throughout the night. Eventually, police said they came to the conclusion that the mother’s story about the kidnapping was “false” and that the case was “being treated as a homicide investigation by the Maryland State Police.”
Nola Dinkins and her mother are Maryland residents.
Botterbusch did not take questions during her press conference on Wednesday and did not respond immediately to an inquiry from Law&Crime about what evidence led them to begin investigating the case as a homicide. Law&Crime also reached out to the Maryland State Police for further information but did not receive an immediate response.
Police did not name a suspect or share further information about what, if any, evidence they found.
