The Mother:
Jennifer Rodriguez did not have the best life growing up in New York. Her mother had a history of substance abuse and her father passed away when Jennifer was only 8 years old. The trauma of losing her father at such a young age manifested itself in Jennifer as depression and as she grew up, she herself started using drugs to try and combat those demons.
Patrick's Childhood:
On November 28th 2002 in Brooklyn NY, when she was still only a teenager, Jennifer and her boyfriend, Patrick Alford SR. had a baby they named Patrick Jr. 3 years later the couple had another baby, a little girl named Jailene. According to medium.com Patrick Sr. and Jennifer had another little girl after Jailene was born but she was never mentioned by name or even really mentioned at all in other publications. They also may have had an older son, but, again, he’s not mentioned very much at all either.
Because of her difficult childhood, Jennifer tried incredibly hard to make her children’s lives as good as possible. She was diligent about keeping them on a routine. She made sure she cooked for them and took them on outings and made sure they went to school. So honestly, despite her inner demons, she was doing everything she could to be a good mom. Patrick Jr, according to Jennifer, was the smartest little boy and so attentive to his siblings. Based on a couple of different sources like medium.com and Pix11, it seems like Patrick was also diagnosed with ADHD.], but he was not being medicated for it at this point in his life.
What is ADHD:
As a bit of a background, according to the American Psychiatry Association Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, is one of the most common mental disorders that affects children. It is considered a chronic and debilitating disorder and is known to impact those with this disorder in many aspects of their life from academically, interpersonal relationships, professionally, and daily functioning. Symptoms include, not being able to keep focus, excess movement not appropriate for the situation, and impulsivity. It is more commonly diagnosed in boys, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that girls don’t suffer from this, boys just tend to suffer from external symptoms, like hyperactivity whereas girls tend to have more internal symptoms which are more difficult to diagnose. There are three main types of ADHD, predominantly inattentive presentation, predominately hyperactive/ impulsive presentation, and combined presentation. There are different criteria for each type which depends on which symptoms are presenting. There is no exact cause for ADHD but there have been studies done that show genetics could possibly play a part in it, although there has yet to be one singular gene linked to it. However, there are also non genetic factors that seem to have been contributors to ADHD diagnoses such as premature birth and low birth weight. it can be hereditary, and there have been proven differences in the brains of children with ADHD and without. Treatment consists of regular therapy and a medication regimen Now with Patrick, as I said, he wasn’t being medicated so It would be logical to assume he also wasn’t in any sort of therapy either, although I couldn’t tell you when he had been diagnosed.
ACS Gets Involved:
In September of 2009, Jennifer and Patrick Sr got into a physical altercation while the children were present and ACS got involved. ACS is the administration for child services. They came and evaluated the situation, not in terms of how the visit went, I’m not sure, but it must have gone well enough that Jennifer continued to have custody of the children. But ACS was keeping an eye on the situation. Now on Dember 26th 2009, Jennifer, Patrick Jr., Jailene, and a relative of Jennifer’s go shopping. Now on this shopping trip was where things started to take a turn for the worse. Jennifer and her relative got caught shoplifting at the store, and they were subsequently arrested. Because her children were with her the officers at the police station advise Jennifer to call someone to pick up the children, so she calls her mother. However, Jennifer’s mother has 20 prior charges against her, so she was absolutely not considered a fit guardian for the children. Now ACS, when Jennifer is released from jail, gets a copy of her arrest report so CPS Specialist Natalia Rosado is advised to do a welfare check, specifically because there were some concerns about Jennifer’s mental stability. Natalia goes to the house to speak with Jennifer regarding this and her most recent arrest on the 28th. During the discussion, Jennifer revealed another arrest that ACS had not been made aware of, according to court records, and Jennifer insisted shes not having troubles with her mental health and that she wasn’t struggling. Except she wasn’t being truthful. Natalia was aware that Jennifer was taking psychotropic medication. Now, Psychotropic medications fall into 5 categories, antidepressants, antianxiety, stimulants, antipsychotics, and mood stabilizers. I could not tell you what, exactly, Jennifer was taking, but it was known she had anxiety, so, at minimum, it would be logical to assume she was on some sort of antidepressant. Natalia must have been relatively satisfied with the outcome of the visit, though, because the children were not removed from the home at that time. Things would change over the next 24 hours.
On December 29th, Jennifer made a call to ACS asking for help being placed in an inpatient drug treatment program. She specifically says she wants to go into treatment due to her marijuana use, but it is explained to her that marijuana use does not make someone qualified for inpatient treatment. Finally, Jennifer confesses to using PCP regularly.
What Is PCP:
Phencyclidine, or PCP, also known as angel dust, is a hallucinogenic drug. It was originally similar to ketamine in that it was used as a pre-introduction anesthetic and animal tranquilizer, according to the National Library of Medicine, but it was recalled after patients experienced side effects of psychosis, agitation, and dysphoria. Now, since being recalled, it is an illegal substance that is used due to its ability to induce illusions of euphoria, superhuman strength, and sexual and social prowess. It’s a very dangerous drug and it can be lethal if taken in high doses.
The Children Are Removed From The Home:
Obviously, ACS immediately gets involved and when they arrive at Jennifer’s home in Staten Island, a man answers the door, who would not identify himself. Also inside of the home is Jailene but not Patrick Jr. so they ask Jennifer where her son is, but Jennifer is currently high and can barely move, let alone speak. Finally, she is able to tell ACS workers that Patrick is with an aunt, but she is unable to tell the ACS workers a name, so they have to do some digging. Eventually, they figure out that Patrick is at the home of his great aunt, Blanca Toledo, in Brooklyn where several other adults live. Since Blanca had never been vetted by ACS to determine if she is a suitable guardian and if her home is suitable for children, Patrick is removed from her home.
The Foster Home:
After removing the children from Jennifer’s custody, they are taken to Manhattan to be placed in a foster home. Now A foster home was found in Brooklyn but ACS hoped to find a home in Staten Island as that’s where the children were most comfortable. Still, one was not available, so at 11pm the placement was made official and the children were brought, on December 30th, to the home of Librada Moran who lived at 130 Vandalia Ave at the Spring Creek Towers apartment complex on the 11th floor. This was in East New York. On The same day, Jennifer and Patrick Sr had an initial child Safety conference to discuss placing the children in a familial home. In Private, Jennifer allegedly told Patrick Sr that she did not want her children to be placed with Blanca, as her husband had allegedly molested her as a child. Officials heard of this claim and proceeded to investigate it. The children were not supposed to be with Librada long-term, it was meant to be a temporary placement. In fact, ACS was looking at having the children placed with their father, Patrick Sr. But in the interim Patrick Jr. was not adjusting well to being in Librada’s home, which is more than understandable. He was extremely upset with the situation and said, continuously how he wanted to be with Jennifer. On January 6th a hearing was held in Family court about placing the children with Patrick Sr, which is interesting because Patrick had gotten into a physical altercation with his girlfriend Shareema Bruington who was the mother of his other children. The family court judge ruled that Patrick would be granted custody, but there were concerns, based upon the altercation, that his home may not have been equipped to have two more children in it, and Jennifer was concerned about an alleged incident where Shareema had hit Patrick Jr and allegedly locked him in a closet, so Patrick could not immediately take his children home until these allegations were investigated and an official decision was made.
On January 8th, Jennifer, her sister, and Blanca went to a supervised visit with the children and Patrick Jr was so upset. He wanted to go home with Jennifer and attempted multiple times to try and leave the office. A week later, on the 14th, due to concerns over Patrick’s mental health, a psychologist ith St. Vincents (according to Medium this was a Dr. Plotnik) performed an initial evaluation on Patrick and an official one was to be conducted at a later date. It was allegedly noted that Patrick was lying had threatened to harm his sister and had attempted to harm himself and urgent intervention and treatment were needed. According to Court documents, this was allegedly due to aggressive behavior that Patrick was starting to display, hitting children in the home, throwing things, and allegedly even smearing his feces on the walls of the home and more than once repeatedly hitting himself in the head. On the 21st, Jennifer and Blanca go to Librada’s home for another visit. According to an article for Pix11, Jennifer said “he was throwing a chair and wouldn’t look at me. I want to come home Mommy he said.” And Blanca said Patrick’s “spirit was broken. Patrick was distraught.” Blanca was. also surprised to learn that Librada really didn’t speak English saying that Jailene and Patrick didn’t speak any Spanish which is interesting that the this was the case because ACS should have been aware that there was a language barrier and that this would not be suitable for Jailene and Patrick. According to that same article, Patrick was also allegedly threatening to run away to be with his mother.
The Disappearance:
On January 22nd a Friday, at around 9 pm, Patrick was going with Librada to take out the garbage. They were supposed to go to the trash chute and come back when Librada received a phone call. Due to this distraction, Librada turned back into the apartment to talk on the phone, but 7-year-old Patrick continued on towards the trash chute. Which was out of sight of the apartment. His 4-year-old sister Jailene called for him, but he never came back. Patrick was gone.
The NYPD Commissioner at the time, Ray Kelly said that, after police were alerted within the first half hour of Patrick being missing when Librada realized they were gone, a search was immediately conducted. At the time, 14,000 interviews were conducted, 9,000 apartments were searched in both Brooklyn and Staten Island (Spring Creek complex alone at 46 buildings according to Pix11) local sex offenders were tracked down and interviewed, and local creeks and other bodies of water were dredged in an attempt to find Patrick. Jennifer was notified the next morning and an officer visited her home to see if Patrick was with his mother, but he wasn’t there. According to Staten Island Live, a week after Patrick went missing, Jennifer was jailed by a family court judge after they demanded that she produce Patrick, but she insisted she didn’t know where he was. She was interviewed for multiple hours, and she passed a polygraph test. Ultimately, after ACS determined Jennifer really had nothing to do with Patrick’s disappearance, she was released from police custody after being in jail for several days. Patrick’s family members were also brought in for questioning in regards to his whereabouts, but that did not turn up any leads.
K-9s were brought in and they managed to track Patrick’s scent to a nearby bus stop very close to where Librada’s apartment building was. However, this Is where the K9s lost their lead and they couldn’t pick up his scent again. Now there is a lot of evidence to suggest that Patrick left the apartment building of his own accord. He was very vocal about running away, but there’s no way he planned to run away, he was 7 besides the fact that it was January when he disa[[eared, and he was last seen in a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. East Coast winters get very cold there was no way that he was dressed warmly enough to wander around the streets of Brooklyn, an area that he was unfamiliar with considering he lived in Staten Island. Court Records also state that Patrick ran away, so there has to be some proof of that in the form of witness testimony or surveillance, but again, he’s 7 years old, so the likelihood of someone taking advantage of the fact that there was a little boy wandering alone on the streets of new York is high. If he got on a bus, it may not have raised red flags, he was tall for his age, and honestly, it’s not that strange for unsupervised minors to ride the bus in new York, that’s just the reality of New York.
Jennifer and Patrick Senior were very active in the search for their son. They created social media pages and hung up fliers, but they were both furious with ACS and how they handled the placement of their children from the very beginning leading them to both file llawsuits 9 months after Patrick’s disappearance. They filed suits against the city, Moran, the foster care agency, and others in Brooklyn federal court, accusing them of negligence according to court records. According to Staten Island Live A settlement was reached in August 2018 in the Federal Eastern District Court of New York and the city agreed to use a $6 million settlement to benefit Patrick and a trust was set up to find Patrick and benefit him upon being found.
According to pix11, two years after Patrick jr went missing, his father, Patrick Senior was shot in his home, he was shot in the side of the head and in the leg. He did survive but he was left partially paralyzed and it suggests he was shot over reward money that intruders believed he had in his home, at the time there was a 12000$ reward from Crimestoppers for information regarding Patrick's disappearance. According to CBS news, 4 years after his disappearance, police were still actively investigating and Jennifer said “I pray that Patrick is out there somewhere. I just want my son back, "I think about my son every day. There's not one day or one moment I don't go without thinking about my son."
There is a theory that Patrick may be in Puerto Rico, according to medium.com. A private investigator by the name of James Osgood allegedly received a tip that Patrick was there and it enforces the possibility that a family member may have taken Patrick due to his mother’s side of the family being Puerto Rican. Now the family was cleared as I said, but if this was someone outside of immediate family, or a close family friend, it’s possible that they were involved, but how would they make that happen? It was by chance that Librada got a phone call, even if it wasn’t, how would they know that Patrick would take the chance to run off unless someone told him to but who would have? The only time he saw his family was at the two supervised visits and those who were there, like Blanca, were cleared. Plus, Jailene was left behind.
Unfortunately, there have been no further updates on this case and it’s been 13 years. Today, Patrick would be almost 21 years old and it’s past time his family got some answers. At the time of his disappearance, Patrick was 7 years old, 4’8 and 65 pounds. He is biracial black and Hispanic, with a medium complexion, brown eyes and black hair with a scar over his left eyebrow. He was last seen in a red tshirt, blue jeans and black air jordans. If you have any information regarding his disappearance please contact
An FBI field office in your area: https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices
New York City Police Department: 1–800–577–8477
There is currently a $13,000 and up to $250,000 reward from Crime Stoppers and NYPD on information leading to the return of Patrick.
Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Patrick is asked to call Crime stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime stoppers website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM or by texting their tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then enter TIP577
