Detectives were on their way to the Bronx Sunday afternoon to retrieve an 11-year-old New Haven boy who had run away from home, sparking an extensive citywide search.
He was one of three missing children located over the weekend.
The boy climbed out of a third-floor window of his Beaver Hills home some time overnight Friday or early Saturday, according to chief of detectives Sgt. Al Vazquez. The boy used blankets to get to a landing, then to the ground.
Police put out a missing-child alert asking the public’s help on Saturday. Officers spent the day and night searching for him.
“It was all-out,” said police spokesman Officer David Hartman, who himself joined the hunt for 10 hours, during which he combed Edgewood Park on an ATV. Other officers searched around Southern Connecticut State University and West Rock.
A break came Sunday morning when a man called to report having seen the boy on the bus early Saturday and inquiring about the train station.
Detectives were about to begin reviewing video from the bus company and the train station when the boy’s mother’s cell phone started ringing. The mom was at the detective bureau on the third floor of police headquarters at the time.
It was her son on the line.
He was at a storefront in the Bronx. He had apparently run out of money, according to Vazquez.
Detectives got the storeowner on the phone and asked him to make sure the boy didn’t leave. They also called New York police, who went to the store to keep the boy there.
Then two detectives, Carlos Roman and Lynn Meekins, got in a car with the mother to head to the Bronx to pick the boy up.
Police ended up searching for two other New Haven children Saturday. They received a report of two girls, 12 and 13 years old, who ran away from home together, according to Vazquez. Police found them within hours.