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Missing: Adji Desir
Authorities announced Friday that they are seeking South Floridians' help to find a 6-year-old southwest Florida boy who has disappeared. FBI said that someone in South Florida might have information about Adji Desir, who disappeared from a migrant farm worker village in Immokalee Jan. 10 after he went outside to play.
Adji is Haitian and lived in an area with a large Haitian population, similar to how South Florida has a large number of Haitians.
Hundreds of volunteers have searched for Adji who is developmentally disabled and has the mental capacity of a 2 year old.
A $23,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the Adji's recovery.
Anyone with information about the case can call the Collier County Sheriff's Office at 1-239-793-9300, the Tampa FBI office at 1-866-838-1153 or the Miami FBI office at 305-944-9101.
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Search Continues for Adji After Two Weeks
Sgt. Ken Becker of the Collier County Sheriff’s Office’s Special Crimes Bureau said he is working with four full-time sheriff’s detectives, a criminal research analyst, and an agent from each the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the FBI on the case. Lt. Thomas Smith, who headed up the ground search, is also involved, Becker said.
Investigators have received more than 300 tips since Adji disappeared from outside his grandmother’s home Jan. 10. Even so, authorities still lack a solid lead that indicates if he simply walked off and got lost, or if he was taken against his will. The task force continues to investigate both possibilities.
“There are so many unanswered questions and so many possibilities, we don’t have a clear direction on which we should be following,” Becker said. “So we’re following a number of possibilities.”
Investigators have interviewed and searched the homes of 16 of the more than 20 sex offenders in the Immokalee area, Becker said. The others are either in jail or investigators confirmed they weren’t in the area at the time Adji disappeared, he said.
Officials in Lee and Hendry counties are also checking on nearby sex offenders.
Becker confirmed that for a time the task force was keeping a close eye on one particular resident, whose identity has not been released.
“I think that that’s probably at a point where it doesn’t look like he’s a person of interest,” Becker said. “I wouldn’t say we’ve totally cleared him out, but it doesn’t look like he’s responsible for the disappearance of Adji.”
Becker said the task force has been entering all the information that has been gathered in the last two weeks into a database.
According to Florida Gulf Coast University Professor David Thomas, whose area of expertise includes criminal psychological and victimology, Adji’s disappearance would be taking a heavy toll on his family.
“In regards to the family there is a certain degree of trauma that they will experience,” said Thomas in a written statement. “The psychological symptoms could range from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder to high levels of anxiety along with grief.”
Thomas said the grief and anxiety come from the fact that Adji is missing and there is an uncertainty regarding his well being.
“It is very similar to those who experience the loss of a loved one. The problem here is that it is limbo because there is hope that he’s well and on the other hand there is fear that Adji may be seriously injured, sick, or suffering from exposure,” Thomas said.
“In either case the family’s feelings will vacillate from one extreme to the other. The greater feeling in all of this is that they will be second guessing themselves and possibly blaming themselves for something that they may have had no control over.”
To address some of those issues, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s Team Adam has continued to help local authorities and the family, said Maribel Slabaugh, program manager for the Center’s Collier County office.
Named after Adam Walsh, the abducted and murdered son of the center’s co-founders John and Revé Walsh, Team Adam is an on-site response and support system that provides investigative and technical assistance to law enforcement agencies in cases of child abduction and serious child sexual victimization. Its members are retired law-enforcement professionals with years of investigative experience at the federal, state, and local levels.
The other big problem facing authorities is keeping Adji’s disappearance relevant to residents as time goes on, said Slabaugh, adding that keeping the community involved with the case is important to help find the missing boy.
“We don’t want people to forget that we are still looking for the child,” Slabaugh said. “We want to keep the community alert and spread the word.”
In an interview Friday, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children president and CEO Ernie Allen agreed with Slabaugh.
“The hardest part is keeping the case alive,” he said.
Becker said investigators need information from the community to help them find Adji, who has been described as developmentally disabled. Anyone with information is asked to call the Collier County Sheriff’s Office at (239) 774-4434 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-780-TIPS (8477).
There is a $23,500 Crime Stoppers reward and a $10,000 reward from the FBI for information leading to Adji’s return.
“I’m always optimistic,” Becker said.
For more information about the search for Adji Desir, visit the Collier County Sheriff’s Web site at www.colliersheriff.org or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children site www.missingkids.com.
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