After family and friends believed him to be abducted, Griffin Dreger, 13, was found unharmed at the Jamaica LIRR station Friday.
A Lindenwood teen originally believed by family and friends to have been kidnapped was found unharmed at the Jamaica Long Island Rail Road station Friday, police said.
A massive search for 13-year-old Griffin Dreger ensued after family members and neighbors reported that they believed he had been kidnapped while taking out the trash before going to school Friday morning. Police said the boy was not kidnapped; he instead had been trying to buy a rail ticket to Montauk.
Griffin, who just turned 13 and is a student at St. Thomas the Apostle in Woodhaven, was leaving his home at 152-02 Cross Bay Boulevard in Lindenwood around 6:30 a.m. when his mother asked him to take a bag of trash to a dumpster about 150 yards from where his mother was parked. The dumpster is out of sight from where his mother was.
“He never came back,” his neighbor Annmarie Hegarty said. “They went out looking for him, and the police said on a security video you see him throw the trash in the dumpster and then get spooked by something. He starts running and runs out of the video.”
“He’s a straight-A student; he wants to go to St. Francis Prep,” she said. “He plays football, he’s smart, he’s funny. He’s usually home studying or playing video games.”Hegarty described Griffin as a “very sweet, very responsible boy” who lives with his mother, a teacher at St. Mary’s, and his father, who works for a fire alarm company.
Neighbors noted that they had been concerned after seeing a “weird white van” that had been driving around the neighborhood. One woman had taken down the license plate number and gave it to police.
Upon news of Griffin’s disappearance, community members immediately rallied and began to work to find him. Numerous store owners posted information about the boy in their shop windows and many parents and other residents shared information via social media, including Facebook.
The Forum’s publisher, Patricia Adams, spoke to Woodhaven Residents’ Block Association President Ed Wendell about the community’s response to the incident on his radio program Friday. The program can be heard at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/project-woodhaven/2013/10/12/radio-free-woodhaven.
By Anna Gustafson
