Toddler found wandering alone may be the son of a missing woman, Miramar police say

When Ebony Williams first spotted the toddler, the curly haired boy was standing in a parking space of a Miramar apartment complex.

She didn’t see any adults nearby and then she heard him cry. So the mom of four went closer — thinking his mom had to be in the car or somewhere.

But she realized he was alone.

“I just walked around the complex hoping I would find someone looking for him,” she said.

By Monday evening, it had been more than 24 hours since she found him wandering in the the 1800 block of Southwest 68th Avenue, in the area of the Willowbrook Apartments. The boy is believed to be between 2 and 3 years old and has not been able to communicate.

She called police after doing a little detective work on her own, walking in and outside the complex, hoping she’d hear someone calling for him. She said he was friendly and grabbed her two fingers when she held out her hand to him.

In a Monday afternoon press conference, Miramar police said the boy — who was found in nothing but a T-shirt and diaper — was in the care of the Broward Sheriff’s Office Child Protective Investigations Section.

Investigators were working several tips, but still had not identified the boy. They released video of the little boy walking down the hallway of the police department holding a dinosaur toy.

On Monday evening, Miramar police confirmed that they were looking into a tip that the boy is the son of Leila Cavett, who according to her Facebook page lives in Atlanta.

Cavett was last seen driving a mid-to-late 90s white Chevy 3500, with a red tailgate and a “Baby on Board” sign on the passenger window, according to police.

“Please help me find my sister my heart is breaking,” Gina Lewis, who says she is Cavett’s sister, said in a Facebook post Monday afternoon.

“I cannot breathe,” she added in a comment.

Lewis, who was asking for donations to travel from Atlanta to Miramar to see the boy Monday, said she was certain that he is her 2-year-old nephew, Kamdyn Cavett.

The Walker County’s Sheriff’s Office in Alabama posted Monday that Cavett was missing and asked for anyone with information to contact them or Miramar police.

“We are aware of the social media posts advising Leila Cavett is this child’s mother,” Tania Rues, a Miramar police spokeswoman, said in an email. “We have several detectives looking into this further. At present time, we cannot conclusively state the little boy’s identity. We have received numerous tips and are investigating each one of them.”

Rues said it is very uncommon that a young child is not identified soon after being found.

For Williams, it’s “heartbreaking.”

She said Monday that she credits God for putting her there to find him before anything bad could happen.

“He could have gotten hit by a car... anything could have happened to him,” she said. “I wanted vanilla coffee creamer at 7 in the morning — that’s really how it happened. God’s good. He knew what he was doing and he put me in the right spot. I am not a hero, not anything else. I’m just a mom.”

Anyone with information about this boy should call the Miramar Police Department at 954-602-4000.

Miami Herald photographer Charles Trainor Jr. contributed to this report.