By The Star Staff
The Puerto Rico Police Bureau and the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol), Puerto Rico office, say they have identified a person who they claim may be Rolando Salas Jusino, 25 years after he went missing.
The information was provided earlier this week by the Wapa Television program “Cuarto Poder,” moderated by Jay Fonseca. The program aired an interview late Tuesday with officials from both agencies who have been working for some time to confirm or rule out whether a man residing in the United States is the 4-year-old boy who disappeared on July 7, 1999 in the Colinas del Plata urbanization in Toa Alta.
The officials said the individual has a birthmark that is the same as one the four-year-old had at the time.
According to the Charley Project, Rolandito, as he was known, was last seen playing unsupervised in a park near his home in the Toa Alta urbanization between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. of the aforementioned date in 1999. He has not been seen since.
Roberto Gotay Valcarcel, Rolando’s stepfather, was a suspect in the case for a time after prison inmates said they overheard him telling people he had murdered the child and buried his body on a farm. That story has never been verified.
Rolando’s disappearance was widely covered in the news media in Puerto Rico and Latin America. A theory that his disappearance was drug-related was quickly dismissed by police, as none of his family members were known to have been involved in drugs. There have been alleged sightings of him in the Dominican Republic, Spain and the mainland United States, but none of those reports have been confirmed. His case remains unsolved.