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stuffsickpeoplehavetoputupwith:

Off-topic but important:

Do you know the little boy in the computer-generated image above? He was found dead in Maine on Saturday and authorities have thus far been unable to identify him. No boy matching his description has been reported missing. He is estimated at only 4-6 years old. The story is below:

SOUTH BERWICK, Maine — Police continue to seek the public’s help in identifying a young boy found dead alongside a rural dirt road here as they acknowledged Monday afternoon that none of the leads received so far has panned out. The investigation into the boy’s death is essentially paralyzed until police find out who he is. To that end, police said they are dissecting about 100 tips from as far away as Illinois, but have little to show so far other than figuring out who the boy isn’t.

The sandy-haired boy with piercing blue eyes, estimated at 4 to 6 years old because his baby teeth remain intact, was found wrapped in an olive green blanket along a dirt driveway off an unpaved portion of Dennett Road around 5 p.m. Saturday in this New Hampshire border town.

Police said no child matching his description has been reported missing in New England, though they continued to expand their search and have contacted schools across New Hampshire and Maine in hopes of identifying the child. Police also said they are reaching out to day-care centers and pediatricians.

“Somebody out there knows who this young boy is,” Col. Robert Williams, the recently installed head of Maine State Police, said at a press conference Monday afternoon at the mobile command center they established at the public works building here.

Police believe those who disposed of the boy’s body may have some sort of local connection because of where he was left.

“It’s a unique, remote area,” said Maine State Police Lt. Brian McDonough, the case’s lead investigator.

Dennett Road branches off Route 4 near the border with North Berwick and begins as paved, but turns to dirt and becomes harder to pass farther from the highway. The boy was found in some woods off a driveway near the intersection of Company Woods Road and Dennett Road.

Police continue to refer to the death as “suspicious,” but refused to say how the boy died or if he was murdered. They would not disclose the results of an autopsy conducted Sunday and an official at the Maine Medical Examiner’s office said Monday they were withholding all information at the request of the Maine Attorney General’s Office.

Police are also still searching for a navy blue Toyota Tacoma pickup truck, with an extended cab and a full cap over the bed, which was seen near where the body was found.

McDonough said the truck was spotted around 7:30 a.m., about the time police believe the boy’s body was left there. He said the boy likely died several hours prior to that.

McDonough said the area resident who saw the truck also found the boy’s body hours later, but he would not say who the person is.

The driveway where the boy was found ends at a home with wooden shingles, set next to a brook, a small pond and a large, well-manicured yard with flowers already blooming. A man at the home Monday morning said the residents there had left and did not want to speak to reporters.

Later in the day, someone placed no trespassing signs along the home’s driveway, which was already blocked by two vehicles, apparently to keep the media at bay.

Near the front of the driveway, there was a makeshift memorial with a cross, a stuffed Winnie the Pooh wrapped in plastic to keep out rain and potted flowers.

Police thought they had identified the boy Monday morning based on a tip, McDonough said, but ended up finding the child they were looking for.

That same morning, Maine State Police also issued a beon- the-lookout alert for a family from the Ashland, N.H., area, including a 57-year-old man, a 28-year-old woman and a 5-yearold boy, but called it off after finding the family safe. The alert was issued via fax with instructions to police not to put it out over their radios.

The boy’s death has garnered media attention that seemed to grow by leaps and bounds on Monday. Ten television cameras and print reporters, from Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, attended the afternoon press conference.

News coverage was stoked by a computer-generated image of the boy that looked startlingly real and the mysterious circumstances of the boy’s death, but all the attention hasn’t shaken free the one lead police need.

McDonough said police are casting a wider net in hopes of identifying the boy. He said the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is dispatching its Team Adam, a rapid-response unit that assists in cases like these, and would try to glean more information from its database of missing children.

Police described the boy as 3-foot-8, weighing 45 lbs. Police said the boy was wearing a “Faded Glory” brand gray camouflage hooded sweatshirt, tan-colored khaki pants and a navy blue T-shirt with the word “Aviator” and a small plane emblazoned on front. He also had on “Lightning McQueen” black sneakers, from the movie Cars.

Anyone with information about the boy is asked to call Maine State Police at (207) 657- 3030 . Union Leader correspondent Jason Schreiber contributed to this report.

Sources for this story:

• http://www.unionleader.com/article/20110517/NEWS03/110519935/1001

• http://abcnews.go.com/US/maine-mystery-police-investigate-navy-connection-maine-boy/story?id=13623452

• http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/2011_0517police_probe_military_link_to_dead_maine_boy/srvc=home&position=4

[The last link, from the Boston Herald, also shows an image of the footwear the child had on when he was found].

(via amadgirl-withablog)