Search continues for 10-year-old Ariel Jeffrey Kouakou

Ahuntsic-Cartierville boy has been missing since Monday afternoon

A helicopter circled overhead and dozens of law enforcement officers and volunteers canvassed Ahuntsic-Cartierville on Thursday as police assured the public they were doing everything they could to find a missing 10-year-old boy.

Police went door-to-door, spoke with residents and looked into recycling bins and under porches as groups of citizen volunteers handed out flyers to passersby.

But as of early evening, there was still no trace of Ariel Jeffrey Kouakou, police said.

Montreal Police spokesman Jean-Pierre Brabant said earlier Thursday authorities still don’t know what happened to the boy, who hasn’t been seen since Monday. “He could be a lost boy, someone who was abducted, or he could have fallen in the Rivière-des-Prairies,” he said.

Officers in boats and on horseback combed the river and a wooded riverside park where Kouakou was last seen by a witness shortly after he left his family home, headed for a friend’s house, he said.

More than 120 tips have been called in since police launched an Amber Alert on Tuesday, but Brabant said none of them have proved concrete.

“For now, all the hypotheses are looked at because we don’t have any leads,” he said in an interview.

“We have more than 100 tips that came into our line and all of them were looked at, but none of those helped us to start a point of search.”

Brabant said that, while officers were considering all possibilities, they aren’t currently planning to reissue the Amber Alert, which is triggered in the case of abductions.

The boy’s father, Frederic Kouakou, told reporters he’s convinced the boy was kidnapped, and he appealed to anyone with information to come forward.

Yannick Adou, one of several dozen volunteers who was helping in the search, said he too believes the boy was abducted, adding the group would be going door-to-door to find out if Kouakou is in someone’s home. Adou, who knows the Kouakou family, said the disappearance of one of the community’s children was felt by everyone.

“I’m a father, I have three kids, so it’s painful to know that we lost one of our kids,” he said. “We are mobilized to find Ariel, and it’s very, very important for all of us.”

Police say the boy, who is Frenchspeaking, is black, has black hair and black eyes, and was wearing a black coat with a hood, grey pants and yellow shoes before he disappeared.

A mobile command post remained in the area and authorities were asking anyone with information to call police.

Brabant said police currently don’t need more volunteers to join the search. He admitted the search was becoming harder with each passing day but said police won’t give up until the boy is found.

“It’s quite rare (in the case of) a young boy who has been missing for three days in a residential neighbourhood for nobody to see anything,” he said.