A 55-year-old Miami man has been indicted more than eight years after his 8-year-old daughter and her mother went missing, federal prosecutors announced.
Daniella Moreno and her mother, Liliana Moreno, 43, were last seen on May 30, 2016, at or near a Home Depot in Hialeah, Florida, according to an FBI press release seeking information on their whereabouts.
For years, Daniella’s father, Gustavo Alfonso Castano Restrepo was considered a person of interest as the last person to see them alive. But it wasn’t until Tuesday that federal prosecutors in the Southern District of Florida unsealed an indictment against him, charging him with kidnapping resulting in death.
Prosecutors did not immediately answer questions from HuffPost about what led to the new indictment.
According to police documents cited by local TV station WPLG in 2016, on May 30, Castano Restrepo had asked Liliana Moreno and their daughter to come with him to the Home Depot, but he got into an argument with Liliana Moreno while driving. Castano Restrepo told police he pulled over and dropped the two off near a turnpike, after she scratched his arm.
Castano Restrepo said he drove to his job at a warehouse, but when he returned to pick Liliana and Daniella up, they weren’t there.
The mother and daughter weren’t reported missing until Liliana Moreno’s sister was unable to contact her for days and Daniella was absent from school, police in Doral said at the time, according to NBC affiliate WTVJ. Police suspected foul play after checking Moreno’s apartment and found it was unoccupied, and that Moreno appeared to have left suddenly. An immense search effort began and was covered closely by local media.
Days later, police found Castano Restrepo inside a truck parked outside the Home Depot in Hialeah, harming himself with a knife, the Miami Herald reported.
He denied his involvement in his daughter’s and Moreno’s disappearances, CBS News reported.
In 2021, investigators sought to bring new attention to the case, which had by then gone cold, even as Castano Restrepo remained a person of interest.
“He’s out in the community here in South Florida,” Miami-Dade Police Detective Christopher Villano told CBS News at the time. “We’re dotting all our I’s and crossing all our T’s and, in these cases, we don’t just want to make an arrest.”
An attorney listed as Castano Restrepo’s representation declined to comment to HuffPost on Friday.
