Avonte Oquendo, who is 14, autistic and unable to verbally communicate, has been missing since October 4, when he was last seen at his Queens school. There's a $90,000 reward for information leading to his safe return, but now the NYPD may be starting to dial back the resources dedicated to the search.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said there have been no credible sightings for the boy so far. The Post reports that the NYPD has "devoted helicopters, divers and more than 100 cops each day to run down more than 200 tips and conduct interviews that could lead to the missing 14-year-old."
Kelly said, "What we’re doing now is searching. We’ve interviewed anyone who has an arrest as far as the abuse of a child under 16. We’re looking at the [sex offender] registry. We’re going over locations again and again," adding, "We're still devoting a lot of resources to the search. We'll have to make adjustments as far as the deployment of the amount of resources that we have. We'll do that some time during the week if we're unsuccessful. Obviously we ask for the public's help with any information at all."
The police have been using infrared cameras as well as utilizing loudspeakers with a message from Avonte's mother that says, "Avonte, this is your mother. You are safe. Walk toward the lights." His father urged the public to help, "We just want to request that everybody take 5 minutes just to look. If we pay a little more attention to each other, we may be able to see things."
Avonte is 5'3" and about 125 pounds—and he cannot verbally communicate. Anyone with information in regards to this missing is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 800-577-TIPS. The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers Website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM or texting their tips to 274637(CRIMES) then enter TIP577
