Search continues for 10-year-old boy
A helicopter circled overhead and dozens of law enforcement and volunteers canvassed a Montreal neighbourhood Thursday as police assured the public they were doing everything they could to find a missing 10-year-old boy.
Police could be seen going doorto-door, speaking with residents and looking into recycling bins and under porches as groups of citizen volunteers handed out flyers to passersby.
Montreal police spokesman Jean-Pierre Brabant said authorities still don’t know what happened to Ariel Jeffrey Kouakou, who hasn’t been seen since Monday.
Officers in boats and on horseback combed a river and a wooded riverside park where Kouakou was last seen by a witness shortly after he left his family home to head to a friend’s house, he said.
More than 120 tips have been called in since police launched an Amber Alert for several hours 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.”
The boy’s father, Frederic Kouakou, told reporters he is 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.