More than two months after a Brooklyn woman denied having any children when cops came looking for her missing 11-year-old autistic son the whereabouts of the boy remain a mystery.
NYPD cops, fearing the worst, have released a sketch and a computer-generated image of Jacob Pritchett, as well as a photo of the mother, Jacqueline Pritchett, all in the hopes a member of the public will help them find the boy, dead or alive.
As the search continues, his 50-year-old mother, described by authorities as mentally ill, remains at Rikers Island, locked up since early October on a Brooklyn Family Court civil warrant charging her with contempt for not revealing where her son has vanished to.
Under terms of the Family Court Act, such a warrant can be issued when the a child’s safety is believed to be endangered.
What is happening in court, however, is also a mystery.
The mother’s court-appointed lawyer, Daniela Mancini, asked for reporters to be barred from a Nov. 24 hearing in Brooklyn Family Court.
A News reporter testified that the case is one of great public interest that has already been made public by police.
Judge Dawn Orsatti ruled that while Family Court proceedings are presumed open to the public she has the discretion, given the age of Jacob and other factors, to close the courtroom to reporters and the public, and did so for that proceeding.
Pritchett is due back in the courtroom Thursday.
The city’s Administration for Children’s Services first learned of Jacob, who is autistic and does not speak, on Sept. 25, when a state hotline received a notification from someone concerned about his well-being, police sources said.
ACS investigators went to the family’s Brownsville apartment on Howard Ave. near East New York Ave., but the mother wouldn’t let them in, sources said.
ACS workers called the NYPD, and when officers showed up Pritchett let them in, but there was no sign of a child having lived there, sources said. Pritchett claimed she can’t have children and has never had a child, sources said. But ACS workers showed police Jacob’s birth certificate, refuting the mother’s claim she has never had a child.
On Oct. 1 the mother was taken to Brookdale University Hospital for a psychiatric observation that preceded her landing at Rikers Island.
Police meanwhile developed potential leads. An NYPD dog picked up on a scent inside the family’s apartment, and a number of neighbors told police they had seen Jacob, but not for weeks.
One neighbor, Shamik Birzhet, 23, who lives in a third-floor apartment above the Pritchetts, told the Daily News the mother always struck him as standoffish and would often leave Jacob in the lobby unattended. Birzhet said he hadn’t seen Jacob for about a year.
He thought Jacob was as young as 6 because he had a slight build, though not young enough for the stroller in which he often saw him.
“He was always in a stroller, never walking around,” Birzhet said. “He was big for a stroller.”
The investigation seemingly picked up steam when police were pointed by neighbors to a nearby dumpster that had what a nearby resident, Angela Summers, 57, called a “death smell,” an odor so bad swarms of gnats and flies forced her to keep her windows closed.
“I know what that smells like — years ago, someone killed themselves in my building,” Summers recalled. “You never forget that smell, that death smell.”
Police searched the dumpster but by then whatever had been inside had apparently been removed, prompting a search, with the help of State Police, at the High Acres Landfill in Perinton, N.Y., about 14 miles east of Rochester.
Police had traced the dumpster’s trash to that landfill but after more than two days searching there was no sign of Jacob, sources said.
With Roni Jacobson
