DAD SENT KID TO THE DEVIL
He gave Myls to monster gal pal and shut kin out Sad boy was abused, thought ‘nobody wanted him’
HE WAS A LITTLE BOY in desperate need of help, and the relatives who could have saved him were all just a few miles away — unaware that the 4-year-old had fallen into the clutches of a monster.
Over the holidays, Myls Dobson slipped through the cracks of his own extended family network. Relatives say Myls was also let down by a web of law enforcement and child welfare agencies that is supposed to protect at-risk kids.
But ultimately, Myls’ fate was sealed by his jail-bound father’s decision to leave him in the brutal hands of a woman nobody in the family knew.
Kryzie King, 27, born in Jamaica as Christopher King, appeared in the life of Okee Wade, 37, about two months ago. Nobody in Wade’s life was allowed to meet King except his son Myls, who began to spend time with her, according to a relative.
Wade talked glowingly about his new girlfriend, describing her “hourglass figure” to one sister and bragging about her swanky Manhattan apartment on W. 48th St. to anyone who would listen.
He told some relatives she was a former model who worked for Nike and told others she was a clothing designer who made videos online and charged for them. Something didn’t add up. “I always wondered how (King) could afford such a nice apartment, I was like, ‘Where’s she getting this money from?’ ” wondered Yolanda Wade, one of Myls’ aunts. “My brother said he met her on the street about two months ago. He said she had a really nice shape . . . he seemed to really like her.”
Through her frequent chats with her brother, she realized Myls was spending more and more time with his dad’s new girlfriend — and it raised concerns, she said.
“He told me that she was taking Myls to a Broadway play, and buying him new sneakers and thinking about a trip to Miami for Christmas,” said Yolanda Wade. “I said to him, and it was in our last conversation, that he really better be careful because he’d just met this woman.”
Wade said she told her brother, “You really don’t know who she is.” Her words turned out to be prophetic. Nearly three weeks after Okee Wade handed Myls to King, the once healthy, happy and vibrant boy was dead. Court papers show he was beaten, burned, gagged with a cloth and forced to brave single-digit temperatures on an 11th-floor balcony for up to an hour while wearing only shorts and a T-shirt. He hadn’t had a full meal since Dec. 26 and lost at least 20 pounds while in the house of horrors.
Paramedics called to King’s Hell’s Kitchen high-rise at 10:50 a.m. on Wednesday found Myls unconscious, slumped over in the bathtub. His broken body was covered with scores of whip marks, burns and bruises. His testicles had abrasions on them. Relatives who viewed the body said he had what appeared to be cigarette burns between his eyebrows.
King, who initially said Myls fell while she was in another room, later admitted to authorities that she — towering over the malnourished boy at 5-feet-10 and 230 pounds — had been fighting with him just before his death. She was trying to bring him to the hospital, she claimed.
At her arraignment Friday, prosecutors detailed the stomach-turning violence King heaped on the defenseless boy, who started to get on her nerves after about a week in her care. He wouldn’t eat, she told investigators. He kicked her. He spilled her perfume.
A law enforcement source said King once beat Myls after he told her how alone he felt in the world.
“He said that nobody loved him or wanted him,” the source told the Daily News. “She got pissed off when he said this.”
For sharing his feelings, King locked Myls in the dark bathroom.
King showed no emotion in court as she was charged with first-degree assault, reckless endangerment and unlawful imprisonment. She was ordered held on $500,000 bail. The medical examiner hasn’t determined how the boy died. Sources said prosecutors may empanel a grand jury as soon as next week and charges could be elevated to murder.
“I can’t understand how this happened, why didn’t (Okee Wade) call someone from the family?” Myls’ uncle Devonn Sherman railed to The News.
Sherman, better known to the world as Romeo from the Queens rap group the Lost Boyz, was in upstate New York, where he regularly contacted Wade and Myls online so the three could play video games together.
“I loved him, he was a great kid. His favorite color was blue, his favorite song was one of mine, actually. He loved to play video games, the Batman ones, and he was a smart, bright little boy,” the anguished uncle said.
His last contact with Myls was on Christmas Day, when he got a text that included a picture of the boy dancing in front of a Christmas tree. “I guess that was in the apartment of this woman, where he was staying. I thought he was with someone in the family,” Sherman said.
The text came from his brother’s cell phone, which meant whoever sent the text had all the contacts for the extended family, Sherman noted.
“If she didn’t want Myls, she had my number, and could have called me,” he said.
Like the rest of the family, he never met King, but heard about her frequently from Wade, who loved to describe his new girlfriend’s upscale lifestyle — although he was vague about how she funded it, Sherman said.
When he didn’t hear from Myls again on New Year’s Day, Sherman started calling relatives to find out who had his nephew.
Wade had gotten full custody of Myls in October 2012 after the city’s Administration for Children’s Services took him from his mother. But the whole family pitched in to care for Myls, especially his aunts, who had both taken him for extended periods before.
Myls’ mother, Ashlee Dobson, 29, was in Harlem, as was the boy’s maternal grandmother, Faye Dobson. Myls’ two aunts were in Brooklyn. None of them had Myls, Sherman learned.
Neither did Myls’ great-aunt and other
relatives on his mother’s side across the Hudson River in Union, N.J.
Each part of the family believed Wade had left Myls with someone else, and over the busy holiday season, with the occasional text or picture coming in from Okee Wade’s phone, nobody sounded the alarm until it was too late.
At a news conference Friday, Ashlee Dobson unleashed her sorrow, saying her regular visits to her son were cut off in November and she hadn’t seen him since. Dobson lost custody after the ACS substantiated a claim against her that she was an unfit mother. Her lawyer Philip Lights said it was because she had been living in a shelter in Harlem at the time.
Faye Dobson said she had put in a call to the ACS when the visitations stopped. She didn’t provide details of when she called the ACS or which office she tried to contact.
ACS officials said Friday that the boy’s case with the agency had been closed after his father was monitored and deemed a good parent.
“The awarding of custody involves all parties to a case, and the recommendation for custody is reviewed and approved by a Family Court judge. Unfortunately, once the ACS’ involvement with a family has concluded, the agency no longer has oversight authority,” the statement said.
Mayor de Blasio ordered an investigation into the case. Results are expected by the end of the week.
The ACS didn’t comment on Faye Dobson’s claim that she tried to alert the agency more than a month ago that Myls was missing.
A source with knowledge of the situation said there was no record that Dobson had called in a report to the State Central Registry about Myls. That would have triggered an ACS investigation.