Toddler Found At Rest Stop, Mom Found Murdered

LONDON, Ohio —A 4-year-old boy abandoned at a highway rest stop told police someone killed his mother, who was later found dead.  The boy lives in Dayton and was found at a rest area in Madison County.

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office is looking for the driver of a car that was apparently stolen from the child’s Dayton area house on Friday night.

NBC 4‘s Mike Bowersock listened to a 911 tape that came into the office of the Madison County Sheriff Friday night.  In it, Mike McConnell describes how he and his wife stopped at the rest area of east bound Interstate 70 near London and found a child alone in the lobby of the rest area. 

“He’s four years old and he says a man came into the house without knocking and shot his mother,“ McConnell told the dispatcher. “He’s cold and tired and in his pajamas and socks.“ 

McConnell and his wife were traveling back to Maryland when they found the child.

The boy knew his address and Montgomery County deputies were able to learn that what the boy told the man who found him was true—his mother was dead.

The victim’s mother, Vickie Nelson, said that police who arrived at her daughter’s house found another car—one that had been stolen from the house two weeks before Christmas.

Nelson said her 29-year-old daughter, Jennifer, was found shot to death.  Her son-in-law was at work at the time of the shooting.

Sheriff James Sabin said the boy gave them good information and enabled them to quickly verify his story and begin a hunt for the car that had transported the child and the man who took him, described as a “skinny” white man. Officials are looking for a 2001 black Oldsmobile Alero with license plate AJ13VF.

Columbus authorities are especially alert to the search for the car because it was headed toward the city when the boy was dropped off, and because the car found at the Dayton crime scene Friday night had belonged to the victim and her husband and had been stolen in Columbus two weeks ago.

Anyone with information is asked to contact police.

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