<p>No schools around here ask for written permission for a kid to walk home and this is an urban school district. I walked seven blocks to school unaccompanied beginning at age seven and so did everyone else in my neighborhood. Kids are capable of walking at that age, it used to be commonplace. Something went horribly wrong here.</p>
<p>Even if the parents had not let their son walk alone it’s not as if this tragedy would have been prevented, it just would have happened to someone else. A predator is a predator, he looks for a victim until he finds one.</p>
<p>The what ifs…the why didn’t they…how could the mother/father…questions will haunt all of us. All I know is that a child is dead. The man was sheltered by the community where he destroyed lives. </p>
<p>I understand Chasidim and the Orthodox community (to the extent an outsider can “know” them). But street smarts are crucial. And this baby didn’t stand a chance.</p>
<p>Pea, that is true…he would have found another child. </p>
<p>The randomness and bad luck of crossed circumstances of time and place led to this tragedy for this particular little boy.</p>
<p>It is not worth second guessing this boy’s walk as it could have been another kid, or even he could have been taken in another circumstance, and the bottom line is that there are evil sick people in the world and a lot of terrible crimes being committed against children. Some are murdered by people they know, even their own parents!</p>
<p>Schools, young children, and dismissal</p>
<p>At our school we have Pre-k- third grade. Students are allowed to walk with written permission from parents, pickups all go to one room and we radio in to have the child sent out when the parents drive up and show their placard to retrieve their child. Bus kids and school aged care children go to the opposite end of the building, under the supervision of the teachers, and we have to watch each child get on the correct bus. If you want to walk your child out at the end of the day, you have to sign the child out. Some parents get very overwrought about all of this, like if they walk up to the school to walk home with their child on a nice day and cannot be in the hall outside the classroom door and just snag the child they sometimes engage in very angry behavior. Whatever. We have so many kids, and they are so little, that we will take lumps for being (in their opinion) overly cautious. </p>
<p>That being said, we frequently have parents call the office and say to let the student walk home, to my neighbor’s house, to Dad’s work, etc. Okay, then they are on independent operations. If the child is unsure or stressed we will call and try to have someone from the child’s emergency contact list pick the child up.</p>
<p>I think this kind of horrible crime occurs in all communities; so much is circumstance. A determined predator will find a victim, street smart or not.</p>
<p>I was six years old when I became a latch key child. I walked myself to school on a busy street and home again. My parents NEVER told me not to talk to strangers. I crossed without a light on a busy street.</p>
<p>Boy, was I lucky.</p>
<p>A month ago we were at Disneyland. I saw a little boy (maybe 4?) in the bathroom. No mother. As my girls and I walked out the father was trying to get someone to help his son find the way out of the bathroom since he was alone. (Yes, the obvious question was…why didn’t he take the boy into the men’s room.) </p>
<p>My daughter and I went back in, armed with his name. I spoke to the boy (from a distance) and told him his father was waiting outside. That kid was SMART (to his father’s not so smart). He started to go and then stopped and stared at me.</p>
<p>I just said, "You are such a smart boy. I am a stranger and you shouldn’t go with me. I’ll have your father call to you so you can follow his voice and get out of the bathroom.:</p>
<p>We walked out and told the father to call his son’s name…loud. And I complimented his son for being so cautious. Someone taught him street smarts.</p>
<p>This situation is a tragedy and a heart break. I think both the little boy and the man had some cognitive issues. That the man also had the capacity to kill someone was just a horrible piece of bad luck when all of these came together. </p>
<p>Both this little boy and Etan Patz were going home by themselves for the first time when disaster occurred. These things do not happen infrequently enough. </p>
<p>I have no idea what made that man capable of harming the little boy. It completely boggles my mind how this all played out. </p>
<p>When you are talking about city neighborhoods, though there are many different sorts out there, there are also a lot of people on the streets, cameras, cars, and you would think that would have been a deterrent. Clearly, it was not. I am just so sad for the little boy and his family. I don’t know what to think or hope for the the man.</p>
<p>^^ not sure how you can say the man AND the boy had cognitive issues? the man was mentally ill/and possibly evil, if both can exist in the same person. the boy, well, he was a child. no reason to think he had cognitive issues, and to place them in the same boat somehow just seems kind of insensitive. sorry, don’t mean to criticize, but just not right.</p>
<p>I said so because it is true. The little boy did have some disability of sorts. The man has some cognitive issues as well as being mentally ill, and certainly evil enough to kill a child and dismember him. </p>
<p>That area of Brooklyn is considered very safe and a lot of kids are on the streets of those neighborhoods. The camp has said it is not changing its dismissal procedures. </p>
<p>At my son’s school, even the middle school kids have to have a note to walk home, and I don’t know any kids who are younger that 11 who make that walk. Also the kids do tend to walk in packs. I know that my high schooler even did. Though it is truly rare that something of the Kletzky case should occur, there are other issues that can arise when young kids are walking in a city neighborhood.Every year I hear of a couple of kids who are relieved of their money and cell phones. Though this year was an exception as I’d heard of only one case, and then last month in the very last week of school, my brother’s close friend’s son was “mugged”.</p>
<p>What’s your source for saying the little boy had cognitive issues? I don’t believe that’s been reported anywhere. I haven’t seen it, anyway. I’ve seen it only as speculation, based on nothing but assumptions, on one of the online newspaper comment threads. (Don’t look at any of them if you don’t have a strong stomach, by the way; many of the comments are openly and horrifyingly anti-Semitic.)</p>
<p>I had to turn away from that photo on the cover of the NY Post yesterday showing poor Leiby walking down the street, looking lost. So awful. So horrible to think that if he’d asked 100 people for directions, he probably would have been fine with 99 of them.</p>
<p>Furthermore, we have no idea if the man who did it really had cognitive issues either, let alone that he’s schizophrenic. Just because his lawyer says he says he hears voices doesn’t mean it’s true.</p>
<p>I know someone from the neighborhood, but it has been touched upon in some news stories as well. AS for the man, I am speculating from news comments, the wording of the confession and how things seemed to have happened. That he has issues is apparent in a number of areas, but it seems clear that he knew what he did was wrong, and also clear that he is dangerous to others. But it seems that it was a horrible combination of factors that came together for this terrible, terrible outcome. </p>
<p>The only anti-Semitic remarks I have read have been regarding the boys’ community and how the children do tend to be unsupervised and out in the neighborhood, and also alot of harsh comments from the Yeshiva World readers regarding the man. There is a horror that it was a member of the community who did this awful thing. Why on earth would anyone be making anti Semitic remarks in this situation?</p>
<p>Why? Because there are lots and lots of horrible people out there who view Internet anonymity as a chance to spew hatred towards Jews and all sorts of other groups every day of their lives.</p>
<p>A rhetorical question. Really what is bothering me is what made this man take the horrendous step of killing the little boy. I have worked with some folks who are slightly disabled in terms of executive cognitive disorders, when they have gotten into trouble for crossing societal lines in terms of talking to young children, hanging out in a playground or school parking lot and having trouble deviating from course when they have a list of things they need to do and something interrupts the process. I cannot imagine any of them harming a person, however. Yet, this man does not seem to have any violent history or anything that would make one think he would kill anyone, particularly a child. It frightens me terribly.</p>
<p>I guess one tiny consolation is that the little boy’s parents, who were too devastated to attend the burial after the funeral, apparently do not know what was done to their son’s body. They don’t watch TV, and I guess newspapers have been kept away from them. This is the statement they posted on their front door:</p>
<p><a href=“Leiby’s Parents: “The Ache In Our Hearts Will Remain Forever” – NBC New York”>Leiby’s Parents: “The Ache In Our Hearts Will Remain Forever” – NBC New York;
<p>
</p>
<p>And this is what the father said at the funeral:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/145702[/url]”>http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/145702</a></p>
<p>
</p>
<p>:(
:(</p>
<p>BEYOND sad.</p>
<p>No child should go through this. </p>
<p>No parent should have to endure this kind of pain.</p>
<p>Cpt -</p>
<p>What has led you to conclude that the child has cognitive issues as opposed to simply being a naive Hasidic little boy? I was raised Orthodox and am very familiar with Hasidim and Hasidishe customs and the children are very sheltered. Leiby had probably never even ever seen Sponge Bob.</p>
<p>If the child had developmental delays, why would the parents have let him walk anywhere alone?</p>
<p>Ellebud - that was an unusual 4 yr old. </p>
<p>I don’t know if Leiby had any cognitive issues or not; I do know that even if coached in street smarts, any 8 or 9 or even older child (or adult!) can be coerced, taken, threatened, scared, and make a dumb decision. This is the world we live in; we can only protect our children so much. It is very frightening.</p>
<p>We must also be careful not to frighten children so much they are scared to do anything! I have seen kids scared of strangers/new situations so much they develop social phobias and fears of going to new places.</p>
<p>I think it is very believable for an 8 year old to be trusting in certain situations. If he asked someone on the street which direction to go into (I have done that in NYC myself!) and the man may have said, “let me show you the way,” he may have trusted him to be helpful. The man blended in with the community as he was from the community. It was daylight and people were out and about. The man could have possibly lied and said that he knew his mother and would take him to her. I don’t find it that odd if the man was kind and helpful that an 8 year old went along. This is how predators work around children and gain their trust. It is not like some big scary monster grabs them (even though this guy was a monster!). Ya know, even here in my state, in the biggest city (well, it is a very small city with the state university in it), a college student was walking at night (this was several years ago) on a busy street and asked a man if she could borrow his cell to make a call. They chatted and this girl ended up dead. She was in college. So, there are situations that seem rather benign and trusting where predators lure their prey. I don’t think one should assume this young lad was unusual to be faced with asking directions and someone being kind and coming across as trustworthy and wanting to lead him to where he was going, and the kid was lured and believed it was safe.</p>
<p>I agree with you, Joan52. That’s why unless I see a citation to a reputable news source,* I will continue to think the “cognitive difficulties”/disabilities story is just a rumor. Which, as such, I don’t think should be repeated as fact. To bring that up seems to me almost like saying, “oh, a ‘normal’ kid would have known better.” Which certainly isn’t necessarily so, especially a child as sheltered as Leiby was.</p>
<p>Donna </p>
<p>*Knowing someone who lives in the neighborhood doesn’t count!</p>