Boy missing: Man 'sorry'
2003-05-26 21:43
Port Elizabeth - Two frantic parents and their youngest son combed the fields, parks and alleys in Korsten in the pouring rain and freezing cold on Monday in a desperate search for their kidnapped four-year-old son.
Friends of Keith Alexander were the last to see him, walking hand-in-hand with a vagrant from the Korsten area, on Saturday afternoon. Police apprehended and questioned the man on Sunday, but he refused to say anything except that he was "sorry".
A preliminary charge of abduction against him is being investigated.
Keith's parents, Timothy and Rene Alexander, said their son was with his aunt, Crystal, at the gate to her house in Elkana Street on Saturday afternoon. She left him alone for a moment to answer the phone inside the house. On her return, Keith was gone.
She ran up and down the street and called the child, but two of his friends said they had seen him walking away with the man and an unknown woman.
The man is familiar to children in the area because he spends his day in the park.
The children said he was wearing large black boots, a black hat and a green coat and that Keith was talking to him animatedly as they walked away.
Started searching on Sunday
Mrs Alexander arrived at the house soon afterwards and reported the child as missing to police. However, police only started searching for the boy on Sunday morning.
Mrs Alexander, who hasn't slept or eaten since Keith disappeared on Saturday, refused to go to a doctor on Monday.
"I don't want him to give me anything that will let me sleep. How can I rest while my child might be lying somewhere alone, afraid, hungry and cold?
"Last Sunday he still had a microphone in his hand, singing in the church. Never, ever, did I think that he might be missing a week later. We are going through hell," she said.