Abduction Scare—

Police Dog Finds Missing Boy

Hiding In Woods

By Andrew Gorosko

On learning that a local 11-year-old boy was missing from school on the morning of Friday, June 8, police launched an intensive search for the youth, suspecting that he might have been abducted.

But after about an hour of investigation, police found the uninjured boy hiding in a wooded area near his home, playing hooky from school.

Police Sergeant Aaron Bahamonde said a mother saw her son waiting for a school bus in front of their Cedar Hill Road home about 7:30 am, as she was getting ready to go to work. When the mother looked out the window again, her son was gone and she assumed that he had gotten onto the school bus and gone to Reed Intermediate School, where he is a fifth grader, the sergeant said. Police did not identify the boy.

The woman then went to work.

About 10:15 am, a school staffer called the mother at work to ask why the boy was absent from school. The mother replied that her son had gone to school. But that was not the case.

Because the boy was absent, school officials alerted School Resource Officer Gladys Pisani of the situation. Officer Pisani then told other police of the situation, who went to the boy’s home to investigate.

After learning that her son was not in school, the mother met police at her home.

Sgt Bahamonde said police approached the situation as if it were a possible abduction. But because there had been no witness to any abduction, police did not activate the Amber Alert system, which formally notifies the public of a child abduction, he said.

Officer Pisani interviewed the school bus driver, who told her that the missing boy had not gotten onto the school bus in front of his house, Sgt Bahamonde said.

Police also interviewed students on the bus, people in the Cedar Hill Road neighborhood, and passersby there in seeking to learn what had happened to the youth, the sergeant said. Police conducted about 20 interviews.

Police searched the boy’s house in seeking any signs of a struggle, but found none, he said. Police set up a command post in the family’s driveway and secured a perimeter around the area, he said.

Realizing that an intensive physical search was needed, police called in Officer Andrew Stinson and police dog Baro for help in the investigation.

After arriving about 11 am, the dog was given the boy’s bed pillow to sniff for a reference scent. The German shepherd then picked up the youth’s scent and promptly found the boy hiding in a densely wooded area about 100 yards away, Sgt Bahamonde said.

 The boy explained that he did not want to go to school that day, so he did not get onto the school bus, the sergeant said. “He just didn’t want to go to school,” Sgt Bahamonde said.

After finding the boy, police notified the school that he had been located uninjured.

Sgt Bahamonde said that no charges would be filed against the boy because he had no criminal intent.

He termed the investigation “very intensive,” adding that “A-to-Z steps were taken to ensure it was no abduction.”

Police took the case of the missing boy seriously because he has no history of such behavior, Sgt Bahamonde said.

“This was made a top priority matter,” he said. About ten police participated in the investigation.

“It worked out well. Everything went according to plan,” he said.

 Sgt Bahamonde said that police dog Baro is a very effective law enforcement tool. After receiving the boy’s scent from the pillow, the dog rapidly found the boy, he noted.

“It’s really incredible…that dog,” he said.

Of the incident, Police Chief Michael Kehoe said, “We were happy that he [the boy] wasn’t abducted. We were very happy that we had Baro.”

Chief Kehoe said that police did not search the wooded area for the boy before the police dog arrived because they did not want to disrupt any possible scent trails existing in the area where the dog would be tracking the boy’s movements.

Before the dog arrived, police searched streets in the area and canvassed neighborhood people in seeking the boy, the police chief said.