As NBC Connecticut continues to dig into the case of a person who claims he was held captive by his stepmother inside a Waterbury dwelling for 20 years, we’re listening to from former classmates of the sufferer who’re sharing their recollections of him.
Louis Collette remembers asking concerning the man, then a younger scholar on the now-closed Barnard Elementary College.
“I do remember I asked like if he moved or something,” Collette stated.
The pair would typically sit collectively at lunch, he stated, till the sufferer disappeared within the fourth grade.
Court docket paperwork state that he was pulled out of faculty that 12 months after complaints had been made to the Division of Kids and Households (DCF) after the sufferer was seen stealing lunches and consuming out of the rubbish.
“I think the first time I met him I was in kindergarten,” Collette stated. “He was always relatively kind of skinny.”
It wasn’t till the allegations of abuse and neglect got here to mild final week when issues clicked for Collette.
“I actually went through our school yearbook, and I’m like, holy crap,” he recalled. “There’s no way.”
He grew up in the identical neighborhood because the sufferer and would frequent the park throughout the road.
“I wish he could have went to regular school like us instead of getting pulled out, because for all I know we could have been friends. He could have joined us at the park, could have played ball with us,” Collette stated.
The sufferer lacking out on his childhood is what his organic mom is heartbroken about. In an nameless interview with NBC Connecticut, she stated she gave up custody of him as a toddler.
She stated as soon as he turned 18, she and her daughter looked for him.
“We had looked for him for so long,” she stated. “At that point, it was trying to find him through media, Facebook. He does have everybody here, on both sides, on both sides of his family that love him, and have looked for him…I’m heartbroken.”
Her daughter, the sufferer’s sister-in-law, stated it was like he by no means existed.
“I’ve been looking for him for over a decade,” she stated. “I wanted to wait until he was 18. I’m almost 35 now. There was nothing…no social media, no court records…no ancestry information, nothing.”
A fundraiser for the sufferer, put up by Secure Haven of Better Waterbury, has raised almost $100,000 as of Tuesday.
Police ask that anybody with data that may assist in their investigation give their detective division a name.
Kimberly Sullivan is due again in court docket subsequent week, and maintains her innocence.
