Nov 25, 2009 6:10 am US/Eastern
Missing NYC Boy Found Living In Subway For 11 Days
13-Year-Old Boy With Asperger's Syndrome Had Problem In School And Wanted To Be Alone, So He Rode Trains
Reporting
Lou Young
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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Commuters wait on a platform as a train arrives at a subway station in New York, on Nov. 21, 2008.
Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images
Francisco Hernandez was back on his mother's Bensonhurst couch Tuesday night after essentially hiding in plain sight in the New York City subway system for 11 long days last month. It's a trauma his mother has found hard to put behind her.
The apartment is still littered with the posters she and her husband put up during their day and night search to locate their boy. She still cries when she thinks about what it was like.
"It is my son," Marisela Garcia explained though her tears. "I love my son. He's a wonderful boy."
The 13-year-old suffers from Asperger's Syndrome, a type of autism that makes social interaction difficult. He had trouble with a teacher in a class at I.S. 281 on Oct. 15 and became anxious, "frustrating," he called it. He decided not to go home but instead to stay on the D train he normally rides during his short school commute. He was hiding.
The soft-spoken teen said he slept a lot on the train and ate first the sandwiches he'd brought with him and then bought junk food from the subway newsstands along the train routes.
A look through the backpack revealed a plastic gallon jug for water and wrappers from the unhealthy snacks he consumed. The clothes he wore included a sweatshirt with a hood on it. He said he kept the hood over his face much of the time.
"When I saw my son he was like a homeless person," his mother said.
In any event it was a long ride from the 25th Avenue D train station near his school. During the 11 days he rode the D, the F and the 1 trains to the end and back, through Brooklyn Manhattan, up into the Bronx and out into Queens.
For five days detectives at Brooklyn's 62nd Precinct treated the case as if it were a typical runaway teenager, but Marisela Garcia got Spanish language media and the Mexican Consulate's office to bring pressure on the department. Five days after he vanished, Francisco's name was given to the NYPD's Missing Person's Unit. Another six days passed before an alert officer at the Coney Island terminus for the D line spotted the boy and asked him "Are you Francisco?" He nodded and the search was over.
Those who work in the city's vast subway system say it's an easy place to hide. Conductor Frank Nunez showed CBS 2 HD where he normally places missing persons posters and said he remembers Francisco's but never remembers seeing the teen.
"Supposedly this kid did not want to be found," Nunez said. "It's pretty easy to elude us for quite a while. I'm not surprised."
As for Francisco, looking at all the TV cameras that had come to take pictures of him, he told CBS 2 HD he did not plan to watch himself.
"I don't watch too much TV," he explained.
His mother said the school problem that drove Francisco to such drastic action has been dealt with and he's much happier at I.S. 281.
His mother said it's going to be a very special Thanksgiving.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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