A 5-year-old girl was abandoned by her dad at the Port Authority Bus Terminal on Monday morning — and when cops went to talk to her mother at home, they found the woman dead, law enforcement sources told The Post.
Authorities are now hunting for the child’s father, Elmer Gomez Ruono, calling him a “person of interest’’ in the woman’s death, sources said.
The little girl told cops she and her father had taken a bus to the terminal and that he had told her to stay where she was when he dumped her on the facility’s second floor by a Hudson Newsstand, sources said.
Passers-by grew alarmed when they saw the child sitting alone around 10 a.m. and alerted authorities, police sources said.
“She’d been sitting there for some time . . . The kid told the cops that her father had told her to wait there,” a source said.
The girl, who spoke mostly Spanish, was taken into the care of cops. She was then able to give them enough information to locate her home in Stamford, Conn., police told The Post.
When cops went to the address, they found her mother, a Guatemalan in her early 30s, dead inside, authorities said.
There were signs of a struggle inside the apartment, the Stamford Patch reported.
Police said they believe the child, her mother and dad had just moved from New Jersey a couple of days ago.
The family hosted a party Sunday night to celebrate their new home, the Advocate said.
“We are trying to find out more about the family because they only moved to Stamford from New Jersey today [Monday] or yesterday,” Stamford police Capt. Richard Conklin, head of the department’s Criminal Investigations Bureau, told The Post.
Conklin added that the department was pursuing the death “as if it was a homicide,” although the local medical examiner had yet to rule on the cause of death.
A second “person of interest” was seen escorted out of the Port Authority police station Monday afternoon, and cops said the situation appears to be a “love triangle gone bad.”
Surveillance video showed the little girl and her dad entering the bus terminal.
The little girl was escorted from the terminal by Port Authority police by early Monday evening.
“She is in good health. We are taking good care of her . . . She is still in our custody. We are working on placing her,” a police official said.
The child was wearing a purple sweater with white stars, pink-striped leggings and pink shoes when found.
Anyone with information on the case was asked to call investigators at (203) 977-4421.