By NANCY WEST, InDepthNH.org
A 16-year-old boy who walked away from a cottage on the grounds of the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester Monday evening was found safe Tuesday morning in a park in Pembroke.
The teen was in the custody of the Division for Children, Youth and Families because of mental health and other problems when he left the cottage on the grounds of the SYSC on foot Monday.
He was not adjudicated as a delinquent, but was housed in a cottage on the grounds of SYSC that is used by DCYF as a last resort to house juveniles while the division looks for an appropriate placement.
InDepthNH.org learned the teen was missing shortly after 7 p.m. Monday when several towns issued a be on the lookout (BOLO) for the boy, but they were apparently given the wrong information.
The boy is 16, not 17 and his physical description was also wrong. Local and state police declined to comment Monday night referring questions to the Department of Health and Human Services, which didn’t immediately respond.
Spokesman Jake Leon emailed InDepthNH.org only after the story was posted Monday night to say the public wasn’t in danger and the boy was not a resident of the Sununu Youth Services Center, that he was under the supervision of the Division for Children, Youth and Families, and DCYF was supporting efforts of police “to return the youth to safety.”
On Tuesday, Leon provided little more information. He did say that the cottage where the boy was staying on the grounds of the Sununu Youth Services Center was non-secured and that he had no contact with the 13 youths who are incarcerated in the separate secure building.
DCYF didn’t contact the boy’s mother until two hours after he left the SYSC cottage. Reached for comment Tuesday, the boy’s mother declined to discuss her son publicly because she worried there would repercussions for him being a confidential matter as he is a juvenile.
While police and DHHS wouldn’t release official details of what happened, social media lit up when a relative of the boy posted photos of him Monday night asking for help in the search.
“He is in a mental health crisis! He is 16 years old,” the relative’s Facebook posting said, asking anyone who saw him to contact Manchester police.
“We need to get him to the hospital to get the help he needs,” the relative said.
Another relative sent the boy a message via Facebook: “go back we all love you. We’re trying to get you the help you need.”
Social media also mentioned a missing girl who was not in the custody of DCYF, but police went to her house looking for the missing boy. A posting on Facebook said the two were found together.