HAMPTON, Va. (WAVY) — Court records reveal new information on two of the three people police believe may have been the last to see a 2-year-old boy before he was reported missing and his body later found in a steam plant in Hampton.
Noah Tomlin was reported missing in late June by his mother, Julia Tomlin. The 34-year-old woman said she put Noah to bed in their Buckroe Beach home around 1 a.m. on June 24. She discovered him missing when she went to check on him around 11 a.m. the same day, according to court documents.
Noah’s body was discovered by police at the Hampton NASA Steam Plant on July 3. Authorities put more than 10,000 man hours into the search and sorted through more than 2 million pounds of trash to find the toddler’s body.
Tomlin was charged with three counts of felony child neglect on June 28 in connection to Noah’s disappearance. She is scheduled to appear in Hampton Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court for a preliminary hearing on July 29.
No one else has been charged with crimes in connection to Noah’s death; however, court records show that there were two men who saw Noah before he disappeared. Both were questioned by police.
One of those men is identified in court paperwork as the father of one of Tomlin’s children. This man told a detective that he’d last seen Noah around 1 p.m. two days before the toddler was reported missing, court documents state.
The other man who saw Noah before he disappeared is described as being involved in Tomlin’s life, “as well as her children’s lives in many ways, to include providing financial support,” according to court documents.
Court documents do not make it clear what the second man’s relationship is to Tomlin or if he had any relation to anyone living in her home.
Police questioned the second man, and he voluntarily gave them two of his cellphones to be analyzed. The FBI did a forensic extraction of data from the cellphones and used a search warrant to obtain information from three Gmail accounts that belonged to the man. Court records state that the man works for Uber, and that police analyzed data from his “Uber log” as well.
Police didn’t find any location data on the cellphones, and it was “as if it were missing or deleted.” They also didn’t find the Uber application on the cellphones, even though the man works for the company. There wasn’t any location information on the Gmail accounts either, which would “appear to be consistent with location data being deleted,” court documents state.
According to court documents, investigators believed the man might have removed data from his cellphones, and that he may have had another phone that he didn’t willingly provide to police. An undercover officer watched the man at work and saw him with a large, black smartphone. The officer took a picture of the phone and showed it to a forensic examiner with the FBI who said that it didn’t appear to be one of the phones that the man had willingly given to police.
