There aren't many details at the moment. Per the Post:
Eric Visa, 46, approached the child as he was walking outside the famous Lower East Side eatery with his family shortly after midnight, according to law enforcement sources.
The creep, who was wearing a top hat, grabbed the boy and walked away before the mother noticed and chased him down, the sources said.
Visa was tracked down by police and arrested at about 3 a.m. He was charged with attempted kidnapping.
The Citizen app listed the address as 164 Ludlow St., which is near Stanton Street...
not placing any blame but why is a 5 year old child walking along Houston street after midnight???
ReplyDeletethe fuck? The kid was taken from outside Katz, that’s all you've got. The fucking family could have been lost tourists looking for their hotel after a late flight. Fuck people like you.
DeleteYoung children anything can happen and quickly. Always remember the story of Etan Patz disappeared at age six, Parents spent years searching he was on the milk carton for a long time never a answer.
ReplyDelete@james: Actually, a few years ago the cold case of Etan Patz was revived and Pedro Hernandez confessed and is now serving 25 years to life.
ReplyDeleteBut I agree, the city isn't a safe place to raise a kid; actually, there are fewer and fewer safe places all the time.
Actually, @james, someone confessed to murdering Etan and is currently serving life without parole.
ReplyDeleteEtan Patz parents let him walk to a bus stop by himself at 6 years old in 1970s Soho, you be the judge if that was bad judgment. Watch your kids people!
ReplyDeleteI took the bus and subway to school when I was 7 or 8 years old, and so did many other kids, before the Etan Patz case changed everything.
ReplyDeleteActually, two people confessed to killing Ethan Patz, and one of them was Jose Ramos (in a jailhouse confession). He was the boyfriend of Etan Patz’s babysitter and is a convicted sex offender, currently in prison in Pennsylvania for molesting two boys he’d lured into a toy-filled school bus. Ramos was also accused by his own brother of abusing him as a child, and was found guilty in a civil case of causing Etan’s death.
But for some reason, many years later, Manhattan prosecutors went after Pedro Hernandez, a schizophrenic with no criminal record who claimed that there was a room full of people in the basement of the bodega he worked in when he killed Etan, and then claimed he left the body in a box on the street in SoHo which was never found in spite of a huge search for a missing child. To this day we still do not know what happened to Etan Patz beyond the delusional confession of a diagnosed schizophrenic.
Lets just be grateful that this young boy was saved from whatever fate awaited him.
Yes I know the cold case resulted in a homicide conviction but his remains were never recovered allowing his parents a burial and closure.
ReplyDeleteLike @Giovanni, I took MTA buses to school starting in first grade; school buses were not a thing at PS 101, only the private schools had those. But it was indeed a different time - there was a supermarket near our apt., and I still remember in nice weather moms leaving baby carriages clustered outside with their kids sleeping in them when they shopped, because there was no way to push the kid and a cart. No one thought anything of it, and nothing ever happened to any of those infants.
ReplyDeleteOr I could just explain what actually happened that the report fails to mention...
ReplyDelete1] I'm not a "creep with a top hat". I'm actually a DJ at one of the neighboring spots and chose to wear a top hat as part of my attire that Labor Day weekend. See www.ericvisa.com for verification.
2] The kid was stepping in and out of the street while waiting for the mom to finish talking to a friend in what seemed to be an after-dinner situation. I noticed that no one was actually watching him closely and the he could be either hit by a cab (as cabs and Ubers were dropping off and picking up club-goers on Ludlow pretty aggressively as can be expected at that time of night at said location) or even perhaps kidnapped. So I thought to bring this to the mom's attention by picking up the kid off the street and placing him on the pavement away from harm's way.
3] Yes, I may have gestured that he could also be kidnapped to make my point, and yes - that was not the best judgement at the time knowing now that the mom would not see it that way.
4] I placed the kid on the pavement off the street before anyone knew what was going on, contrary to the false report that the mom chased me down the street.
5] I thought nothing of this once I left the kid with his mom and continued on to my DJ gig, which ended at 3am. I was arrested as I walked back to my ride hours later (no one attempts to kidnap someone, fails at it and then hangs out at the scene for 5 hours. But what do I know. As stated, I'm not a kidnapper).
6] In my opinion, my point was made and the kid was actually safer after this interaction given that he was off the street and out of harms way and that his mom paid more attention to him after this.
7] Yes, in hind sight I should have just verbalized my concerns. I get that. But please understand that I'm African and grew up in an environment where society was heavily involved in all the kids' well-being. This gesture was purely a product of that mentality.
8] The NYPD detective upon an exhaustive investigation recommended to the DA's office that this was not a kidnapping attempt based on everything that was uncovered about my identity.
9] I'm happy to answer any questions about this should anyone need to engage.
10] I still maintain that parents and guardians should keep a closer eye on their kids on Ludlow Street (or any other street) late on a Saturday night, if they have to be out there.