Earlier this week, a Lyft driver called 911 to report he had been kidnapped at gunpoint and forced to drive two men to Miami Beach.
That rideshare driver is Atilio Bellanza, who said the reason he even works late at night is that almost two months ago, their world was turned upside down when he and his wife suddenly found themselves having to care for two girls, on top of also caring for their own two boys.
“I don’t know if the right word is abandonment. I think she chose where to leave them,” Bellanza’s wife, Andrea Leoni, said in Spanish.
Leoni said that on March 7, her former neighbor and the biological mother of the 5- and 10-year-old girls, Nixmarie Barbara Melendez, left the children at her apartment and never came back.
“The 5-year-old has autism, for which she’s never received therapy, and both need emotional and behavioral therapy,” she said.
Earlier this week, a Lyft driver called 911 to report he had been kidnapped at gunpoint and forced to drive two men to Miami Beach.
Leoni said she reached out to the Department of Children and Families while caring for the girls.
“They immediately came to my house, they checked that they were fine, that they were healthy, that it was a safe home for them, and in about three days they gave me and my husband custody,” Leoni said.
She said she underwent more than five hours of questioning, a process she says went fast.
Leoni also told DCF about her brief conversation with Melendez.
“That she had neither the desire nor the capacity to be a mother,” Leoni said.
As for the father, Leoni believes one of the fathers is dead and the other, identified by court documents as Jasson Lopez, called her from prison.
“He gave me God’s blessing and thanked my husband and me for what we had done and never called us again,” she said.
Melendez also has a third daughter who’s 15 months old and is in the care of her father.
NBC6 spoke to a woman who said she’s the toddler’s Godmother, Carmen Santamarina. She saw the story that aired on our sister station, Telemundo51, and wanted to speak out.
“This is devastating, that baby… I mean I love her to death. If you would have seen her at birth, she was an itty-bitty little thing like this, and I can’t imagine any mom not loving her baby,” Santamarina said. “It’s very sad, even though the baby is in great hands.”
Over the course of almost two months, Leoni and Bellanza have gotten to know the two older girls.
“They lack an education; they lack a sense of purpose, because they were clearly abandoned, they were very vulnerable,” Leoni said.
Leoni started a GoFundMe to raise money for basic necessities. She said she had to stop working because the girls require a lot of attention. The family is relying on Bellanza’s income alone as they transition from a family of four to a family of six.
As they navigate their new normal, Leoni questions the role of the authorities and the mechanisms that are supposed to be in place to protect children.
“It is very unfair that they went through everything they went through, and that no one looked after them,” Leoni said.
Surfside Police Chief Charles Press said he got a call from one of his sergeants, Marian Cruz, asking what they could do as a police department to try to help the family.
“She immediately provided food for them, but it wasn’t enough. So, I jumped on the bandwagon with her. And we have since passed it around the police department to see what we could do as police officers because they are our residents,” he said.
Chief Press hopes the community will see their story and step forward to help however they can.
“Spread the word to South Florida because sometimes bad things happen to good people, and good things turn out after that bad thing. So that’s our hope and our prayer that it turns out that way,” he said.
Press and Cruz have foundations dedicated to helping people in need. The chief said they’re working to raise money to help the family. If you’d like to help, you can call the Surfside Police Department at 305-861-4862.
Attempts have been made to locate the biological mom of the girls, but her whereabouts remain unknown.