9-Year-Old Autistic Boy Found Dead in Miami Canal After Mother Reported Him Abducted

[tulipsandroses]

I'm smelling a Susan Smith here. Like Susan Smith, she said the scary black men did it. It does not say it in the article, but I was up late a few nights ago when the Amber Alert for this poor boy flashed across the screen. The description given in the Amber Alert of the " abductors" - 2 black men.

I was on the phone at the time, and said to my friend sometimes these Amber Alerts turn out to be custody cases gone wrong. But it is strange that 2 men would kidnap a child. Who gets their buddy to help them kidnap a kid? Now I see this mother's very odd story of how it happened. I don't think mom is telling the truth.

The boy’s mother told police that her son was abducted by a man in a mask demanding drugs, a claim investigators are reportedly still trying to verify.
A 9-year-old severely autistic boy was found dead in a canal in Miami on Friday morning, just hours after his mother told police two men had ambushed her while driving and snatched her son from her vehicle.
The body of Alejandro Ripley, who was non-verbal, was reportedly found just a few miles from where his mother reported the abduction.

Patricia Ripley told police late Thursday that two men in a vehicle had cut her off as she drove with Alejandro, and one in a mask approached her car and demanded she give him drugs. When she told him she had none, she said he snatched her cell phone and abducted Alejandro.

[link:https://www.thedailybeast.com/non-verbal-autistic-9-year-old-alejandro-ripley-found-dead-in-miami-canal-after-reported-abduction?ref=home|

[NBachers]

1. I agree with you - this raised my suspicions as soon as I read the headline.

[Ilsa]

2. God, this makes me ill, no matter

how it happened. Poor child.

[BittyJenkins]

3. I thought the exact same thing. Her story does not hold up.

I hope the police look deeper.

[Takket]

4. oh my........... 20 minutes?

"A law enforcement source quoted by the Herald said security footage from a Home Depot parking lot near where the boy was allegedly abducted showed Patricia Ripley sitting alone in her vehicle for about 20 minutes before she phoned police."

[lunasun]

7. Thinking thinking thinking ... Doesn't sound good . Poor boy RIP

It also puts people who fit the description at risk if it was a false report given and also wasting police time
with a diversion.
Hopefully in memory of the victim the whole truth whatever it is will come out

[niyad]

5. First reaction?? Mom did it.

[Squinch]

6. Me too.

[mr_lebowski]

8. Or she's covering for a man she's involved with who did it ... (nt)

[niyad]

9. Also a possibility.

[Mariana]

10. Or else she's covering for someone else who did it.

A spouse/partner/lover, maybe.

[BigMin28]

11. The only way

someone would have gotten my child was over my dead body. They would have had to kill me first. At the very least, I would have chased them down. This doesn't make sense.

[Laffy Kat]

12. How terrifying for the child if it was a parent, and I'm willing to bet it was.

To be murdered by the person who is supposed to protect you, it's hard to even think about.

[cyclonefence]

13. I will catch lots of shit for saying this, but poor mom, too

This horrible murder has much to do, I suspect, with the fact that children with disabilities are not receiving full services during the pandemic. I further suspect that the hours the child was in school were the times this woman was able to live something approaching a normal life, and when that was taken from her, she snapped and killed her poor child.

She had no recourse to the normal assistance available for families of children with serious disabilities, no emergency respite care, not even a neighbor who could watch her son for half an hour so she could go to the grocery store. Depending on the seriousness of the child's disability, she may not have been able to use the toilet or take a shower unless he was sleeping.

Nothing excuses taking your child's life, but people who have not experienced life with a severely disabled child are too quick, imo, to condemn parents who see no other solution to their despair--and in these times, it's hard to think of how this mother could have gotten help.

The murder does not mean she did not love her child. It means she did not know what else to do.

I am surprised, in fact, that she did not commit suicide, which is the normal pattern in situations like this. There are examples of entire families being murdered, with one committing suicide, because they did not know what to do about caring for their disabled child.

Sadly, I predict there will be more cases like this unless services for people with disabilities, especially respite programs for children who live at home, are opened.

[mia]

16. Well said. Thank you.

I have a disabled grandson.

[yardwork]

17. Well said. I'm worried about all the families who are suffering in isolation.

[BGBD]

14. Two things...

First, stranger abductions are incredibly rare. One of the rares crimes in the nation. Missing or abducted children are far more likely to have run away, gotten lost, or been abducted by a parent or other close relative/friend. It would be basically unheard of for a stranger to abduct a child right infront of a parent. When it does happen, it is a much less obvious or brazen thing. A predator will wait for a child to be left alone or unwatched before making a move like that. When it does happen it is almost always a sexual predator, not someone trying to get money or something else.

Secondly, when a child disappears the parents are automatically the first suspects that need to be looked at.

So yeah, I think you are right on with this. The story is highly unlikely to be true. It's not the way something like that would happen, it's the way somebody thinks it would happen, so it is the story they make up.

[MustLoveBeagles]

15. It looks like you and the other posters were right

Another thread with an update: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213473591