Waterbury police found a 3-year-old girl wandering alone on Friday and later discovered her 34-year-old mother dead inside a nearby home. Sgt. Joseph Morais said officers were sent to the area of Poplar Street at 10:52 a.m. after the child was reported missing from supervision.
Police said the child showed no signs of abuse or neglect. Officers then went to a home on nearby Alder Street to contact her mother, which led them to the dead body inside the residence.
Poplar Street response
Morais said emergency medical personnel pronounced the woman dead at the scene. Police said she was unresponsive and appeared to have been deceased for a period of time before officers entered the home.
That timing made the child’s earlier wandering report the first link in the case. Police were able to connect the girl to the Alder Street home the same day, moving the response from a missing-child call to a death investigation within hours.
Alder Street investigation
Investigators did not observe any obvious signs of foul play. As of Friday afternoon, police were treating the death as an untimely death, a description Morais used while the investigation remained open.
The mother’s name was not released on Friday. Police asked anyone with information to contact the Waterbury Police Detective Bureau at 203-574-6941 or use the anonymous Crime Stoppers tip line at 203-755-1234.
Waterbury Police Detective Bureau
The case now turns on the cause of death and the time between when the mother was last seen and when officers found her inside the home. Until detectives finish that work, the facts that matter most are already fixed: a 3-year-old was found alone, her mother was found dead nearby, and Waterbury police are still trying to explain how both happened on the same street.
