Father arrested after girl abandoned in bus station leads cops to dead mom

NEW YORK -- Authorities have arrested the father of a 5-year-old girl who was found abandoned at New York City’s Port Authority Bus Terminal Monday, reports CBS New York.

The little girl led authorities to the body of her mother in Connecticut, prompting a multi-state manhunt for her father, Elmer Gomez Ruono.

The station reports that Ruono, 32, was arrested walking down the street in Brooklyn around 1 p.m. Friday by members of the NYPD and U.S. Marshal’s Fugitive Task Force.

There was no immediate word of charges. 

A Port Authority police officer passing by saw the girl alone in the busy bus terminal on Monday. The girl told him her father instructed her to “wait here,” but never returned.

She gave the officer her address, a home on Courtland Avenue in Stamford, Conn., and that led police to a gruesome discovery.

“We went there on a wellness check and when we got there, we found a female deceased inside the apartment, about 30 years old,” said Tom Barcello with the Stamford Police Department.

Police said the dead woman was the girl’s mother. No cause of death was released, but it was reportedly being investigated as a homicide.NJ.com reported Ruono had been called a person of interest in the death of the child’s mother, his estranged wife, prior to his arrest.

Stamford police said the young girl is in protective custody.