Remains Found at Trash Incinerator Are Those of Missing Virginia Boy, DNA Shows

Noah Tomlin, 2, was last seen at 1 a.m. on Monday, June 24, in the Buckroe Beach area of Hampton, Virginia. Hampton Police Department

The remains discovered at a trash incinerator in Hampton, Virginia, were confirmed to have belonged to a 2-year-old missing boy.

Noah Tomlin was reported missing more than 10 hours after he was last seen at his home near Buckroe Beach on June 24, CBS17 reported.

Hampton Police made the announcement on July 13 after an update from the Virginia Department of Forensic Science and the Medical Examiner’s Office, reported WTVR. His remains were found at a steam plant on July 3.

Hampton Police Chief Terry Sult noted that on June 28 that investigators thought Noah was dead after a “highly coordinated investigation.”

Noah’s mother, Julia Tomlin, was charged in the child’s disappearance. Her records revealed that in 2010, she spent five years in prison after pleading guilty on felony child neglect charges.

Police officers and fire crews spent days searching the plant and landfill, sifting through some 2 million pounds of garbage, Sult told WTVR.

“You’re dealing with conditions that are high humidity, high temperature. In this case, at the steam plant, they’re in a confined space,” Sult said. He added that firefighters had to monitor carbon dioxide levels as the officers searched so they wouldn’t get sick.

“When you get into that and you smell the odors and you’re in the midst of everything, then you realize what you’re there for, and you’re going through literally millions of pounds of garbage,” Sult said. “It takes tolls.”

According to CNN, the steam plant where the body was found is where city waste goes to burn. The combustion creates steam that is sent to the NASA Langley Research Center, which uses the steam for power.

Police had suspected that the body of the boy was taken to the plant or a landfill, CNN reported.

Prosecutors are now determining whether more charges will be filed in the case against Tomlin.

“We’re not excluding anything,” Sult said, CNN reported.

The police chief didn’t elaborate on why officers searched a landfill or the steam plant.

Other details about the case are not clear.

Facts About Crime in the US

Violent crime in the United States has fallen sharply over the past 25 years, according to both the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS).

The rate of violent crimes fell by 49 percent between 1993 and 2017, according to the FBI’s UCR, which only reflects crimes reported to the police.

The violent crime rate dropped by 74 percent between 1993 and 2017, according to the BJS’s NCVS, which takes into account both crimes that have been reported to the police and those that have not.

Police tape blocks a street in Midtown Manhattan on Nov. 12, 2017. Benjamin Chasteen/The Epoch Times

“From 1993 to 2017, the rate of violent victimization declined 74 percent, from 79.8 to 20.6 victimizations per 1,000 persons age 12 or older,” the U.S. Department of Justice stated.

Both studies are based on data up to and including 2017, the most recent year for which complete figures are available.

The FBI recently released preliminary data for 2018. According to the Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report, January to June 2018, violent crime rates in the United States dropped by 4.3 percent compared to the same six-month period in 2017.