Five-year-old Kata Alvarez went missing on June 10 in northern Florence. Investigators are examining surveillance camera records from the vicinity of the former Astor Hotel, the building where she lived with her mother. The last frame where the girl can be seen is a shot from 15:13. There is a suspicion that someone may have taken the child out of the side, unused corridor outside the hotel. Investigators took DNA samples from all residents. A recording from a nearby pizzeria appeared on the Internet, on which a child’s scream is to be heard.
Mia Kataleya, because that is the full name of a girl from Peru, went missing on Saturday, June 10. She was wearing black boots and a light-colored T-shirt with short sleeves. “Hair: chestnut, eyes: chestnut, height: 115 cm” – we read in the announcement, which was shown, among others, by the Italian TV Rai. That day, the girl was in the care of her uncle, who looked after her and her 8-year-old brother Lenny while their mother worked in a nearby supermarket.
Kathrine Alvarez, 26, left them in the care of her brother shortly after 7.30am. The teenage boys and their uncle were staying in a large yellow building with a yard, the former Astor Hotel. According to the Italian news agency Ansa, the facility was illegally inhabited by 132 people, including 42 children.
She was playing with her friend in the yard
– Around 14.00 other relatives joined us, I remember that I combed Katy’s hair, then she went to play with her friend in the yard (inside the building – ed.). I watched them through the window. I also took care of my baby, changing his diaper. Later, the mother (Katy – ed.) came and asked where her daughter was – reported on Tuesday, June 27, Abel, the uncle of the missing girl, in an interview with a journalist of the Rai TV.
When Kathrine Alvarez found out that 5-year-old Kata was playing with her peers in the yard, she was not initially suspicious, as the children were in the habit of roaming around the building together. After 4 p.m., she became concerned because she couldn’t locate her daughter. A neighbor told her that Kata and her friend had quarreled about something and split up a moment earlier. The 26-year-old and all her relatives began to ask about her all the residents of the former hotel they met, they knocked on every room and apartment. To no avail – the five-year-old disappeared without a trace.
The search for the 5-year-old continues. The hypotheses include kidnapping and revenge chilhavisto.rai.it
They evicted people, searched attics and cellars
“At 18.45, she makes a call to the emergency number 112. The carabinieri suggest that she personally go with her daughter’s photo to the police station in Santa Maria Novella square. Before she gets there, she stops at the headquarters of the Railway Protection Guard, but she fails there too Surveillance cameras record her there at 19:10. She reaches the Carabinieri around 19:40. She officially informs them of the child’s disappearance (…) and at 20:30 begins to testify, “we read the police findings obtained by the journalist “Corriere della Sera “.
Since then, officers have searched the hotel building and its surroundings several times, including Cascine Park and parts of the Arno and Mugnone rivers, after being evicted from the facility illegally occupied by dozens of families of Peruvian and Romanian nationality. Later, the search operation was extended to other districts of Florence, and the girl was included in the Child Alert system. On June 22, the prosecutor’s office in Florence commissioned the analysis of recordings from all 1,500 cameras in the city to find a trace of the missing girl.
The services from Florence are looking for a 5-year-old girlmet.provincia.fi.it
Quarrels between the inhabitants. Everyone will give a DNA sample
On Tuesday, June 27, Italian media reported that prosecutors in Florence were investigating a “kidnapping for extortion” with no specific suspects yet.
“Investigators ordered a DNA test of all the people who lived in the facility and DNA samples were also taken from items left in the building that were secured after the eviction,” reports the daily Il Fatto Quotidiano. According to the media, at the moment none of the former residents objected to donating their genetic material. Katy’s DNA was taken the day after she disappeared – from a toothbrush.
It is no secret that the area of ​​the former hotel was a place of conflicts between the families who lived there. “In March, my family had an argument with another Peruvian family on the third floor, they wanted to take our rooms,” the girl’s mother told reporters the week her daughter went missing.
According to the woman, someone could have grabbed and carried the five-year-old out of the hotel, and maybe even taken her out of Florence. “It’s impossible for her to get lost or leave the hotel on her own,” she told the “Repubblica” journalist. She told the Florentine daily La Nazione that she thought someone might have wanted revenge on her. The 26-year-old’s partner, Katy’s father, was released from prison last week after serving a sentence for credit card theft.
Five-year-old Mia Kataleya Alvarezfacebook.com/Eugenio Giani
Third exit
The old hotel building is located at the intersection of Boccherini and Maragliano streets. As the Corriere journalist writes, the entrance from Via Maragliano, once the main entrance to the hotel, has recently been cluttered and occupied by a person with mental disabilities, so no one has used it. Residents entered the building through a gate on Boccherini Street.
The Tuscan weekly “Il Tirreno” describes one more exit from the facility. “It’s a corridor that directly connects Astor to Rue Monteverdi, you just have to cross the unused space of the old bakery. One of the threads now being investigated by investigators is precisely where someone could have used this exit, already searched by the carabinieri, to go out on the parallel street Monteverdi. There is no surveillance camera there,” we read.
Because it is certain that neither the cameras in Via Boccherini nor those in Via Maragliano registered the image of the girl after 15.13. The shot of her descending the building’s external stairs from the third floor is the last trace of the missing child. Earlier, between 15.01 and 15.12, it can be seen circulating between the ground floor and the floors of the former hotel.
The former hotel is marked with a pin. Monteverdi Street is the first one from the bottom, parallel to Maragliano Street
The elderly woman claims she heard a scream
Over the weekend, a journalist from the “Quarto Grado” TV Mediaset reported that he had come across a recording from a nearby pizzeria, on which a child’s scream could be heard. It’s a surveillance video, but there are no characters on it, just a voice – a high-pitched scream that lasts for several seconds. It was registered at 5.20 p.m. on Saturday, June 10, the same day that Kata went missing. The restaurant is located about 250 meters from the former hotel, at the intersection of Veracini and Monteverdi streets (the exit from the above-mentioned corridor is to be located on the latter street).
Last Friday in the program “Mattino Cinque News” of Canale 5, a senior who lives in the area spoke. She claims to remember hearing a little girl crying loudly that Saturday. “She was screaming: Mom! Mom! I know that a lot of children live in that hotel, but this scream was different than usual,” the woman reported.
Investigators have not yet commented on the recording from the pizzeria or the woman’s statement. Hearings of residents and analysis of recordings from monitoring cameras are underway.
Corriere della Sera, Rai, ANSA, La Nazione, Il Tirreno
Main photo source: facebook.com/Eugenio Giani