‘IT’S UNIMAGINABLE WHAT THEY’RE LIVING’
10-year-old unaccounted for after a week
School was closed on the Monday that Ariel Jeffrey Kouakou asked for his parents’ permission to walk to a friend’s house alone. It was a big ask, walking to a buddy’s by himself, something the skinny 10-year-old, with the dark hair, dark eyes, warm smile and gentle nature had never done, and a request his parents agreed to on the day their son went missing.
School was open a week later — Monday, March 19 — as a team of Montreal police divers assembled on the ice of the Rivière des Prairies. Their mission was grim: the river abuts the park where Ariel was last seen, a sighting reported to police during the early stages of the sevenday search that has gripped Montrealers, yielding few clues and even fewer answers as to what has become of the missing boy.
“At this point, although a week has passed, we have to keep hope of finding this boy and giving the gift of closure to the parents,” Pina Arcamone, executive director of the Missing Children’s Network, told the Montreal Gazette. “It’s unimaginable what they’re living.
“It really is.” Kouadio Frederic Kouakou is Ariel’s father. He is a French-speaker, as is his son. Kouakou embodies the Canadian dream: he immigrated to Montreal from Ivory Coast. Now he works as a teacher at a local school. He and his wife, Akouena Noella Bibie, have insisted, from the start, that Ariel was kidnapped. Ariel, his father has said, loved soccer, not swimming. And he knew well enough not to venture too close to a fast rushing river, with its deadly currents and its thin ice.
“From the beginning, I have said that he was taken, that it was a kidnapping,” Kouadio Frederic Kouakou told TVA Saturday. “My appeal is for compassion from the kidnappers. I pardon them, as does my wife.
“All we are asking is for them to bring our child back safely.”
Montreal police have not ruled out the family’s kidnapping theory. Officers have fielded some 247 tips in the case, chasing every one, an effort the Kouakous have repeatedly praised. The family is offering a $10,000 reward for Ariel’s safe return. Adonis Stevenson, a local boxer and a HaitianCanadian, has pledged an additional $15,000, pushing the total to $25,000.
On the day he vanished, a security camera at a local garage captured a fleeting image of Ariel. He enters the screen-view from the left, walking steadily in the direction of his friend’s house in north-end Montreal. The hood of his jacket is pulled up to ward off the cold. He raises his left hand to his face. He is 4-foot-7, no more than 90 pounds, and wearing grey pants and bright yellow sneakers. Ariel appears, and then he is gone, but when he got to the friend’s house — the friend wasn’t there.
Ariel’s parents reported him missing later that day. In the days since, police have been out in force searching, with mounted units wading through knee-deep snowdrifts and helicopters hovering overhead. Hundreds of community volunteers have banged on doors, checked backyards and alleyways, garages and wooded areas, and handed out flyers with Ariel’s image on them. Hoping for a clue, a sign — even a shoelace — that could point searchers in the direction of the lost child.
Last Friday night about a hundred people — strangers, neighbours and friends, many holding candles — gathered in front of the Kouakou family home. Ariel’s friend organized the vigil. He was 10, like Ariel, and it was his birthday.
“I don’t want gifts,” Gabrielle Fournier-Villeneuve told Global News. “I want to bring hope to those who’ve lost it.”
Three days later, the police divers took to the river, dragging sleds loaded with propane heaters, scuba tanks, stepladders, heavy ropes and tools for boring through the ice.
“There’s ice and snow that’s blocking the light, so the divers can see about three feet — not more — in front of them,” Montreal police Sgt. Manuel Couture told The Canadian Press.
On Monday morning, as the police went to work, a reporter asked Ariel’s father how he was managing to stay strong.
“I am from Ivory Coast,” Kouadio Frederic Kouakou told Radio-Canada. “In our country, the father is the central pillar. If I crumble, everything will crumble around me, and I don’t want that."
MY APPEAL IS FOR COMPASSION FROM THE KIDNAPPERS.