For nearly two weeks, pedestrians in myriad downtown East Side Manhattan neighborhoods including Chinatown, Two Bridges, South Street Seaport and the Civic Cent...
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Search for Missing Long Island Boy, 15, Focuses on East Side
Yan explained that Thomas had asked to stay after school that day and that his parents could pick him up 9 p.m. The Stony Brook School, in Stony Brook, is a private Christian college preparatory school with both residential and commuter students. That her son would stay late and socialize with his classmates was nothing unusual and something his parents encouraged.
When Yan’s husband went to pick up Thomas at 9 p.m., he wasn’t there. School security was immediately informed and inquiries made of the boy Thomas was supposed to be hanging out with that day. That classmate said he hadn’t seen Thomas except in school. Security searches of the school’s dorms, with continued until 2 a.m. Saturday, turned up nothing.
Meanwhile, Yan and a friend went out looking for Thomas themselves at 12:30 a.m. and when that was unsucessful, they went to the Suffolk County Police.
In the days following, it was learned that after Friday’s school dismissal, Medlin had rushed to the Stony Brook Station of the Long Island Rail Road on North Country Road, literally adjacent the school, Road and taken a train to Grand Central Station.
Yan further revealed that Thomas had told a friend he “met” someone on Roblox and wanted to them. Though his friend warned against this, “don’t go, it’s not safe, you have to watch out,” his warning, it wasn’t heeded.
Starting to break down but then composing herself, Yan went on to explain that, besides the unbearable pain of her missing son, it takes a long time for the the various social media platforms, including Roblox, to release information, even when a missing child, and police, are involved.
Roblox, which has faced
prior criticism for its child safety policies, issued a statement saying “We share everyone’s hope for Thomas Medlin’s safe return and our thoughts are with him and his family. We conduced a thorough review to support law enforcement’s investigation and found no attempts to direct to an off-platform communication method or sharing of off-platform contact information.”
For their part the SCPD “has determined that these [online] platforms are not connected to his disappearance. There is no indication of criminal activity.”
Her voice again trembling during her Fox interview, delivered a public message for her son: ”We just want him to know we love him deeply and he’s not in trouble at all. You know, whatever he did we understand. Please, we just want him to tell us he’s safe, because thinking about that each day, where he be, if he’s safe, it’s really put us
— it’s f***ing hell, more than hell.”
”It’s a deep message, we love him so much, we want him to send us a message. Whoever this person he is staying with, have a kind heart and let us parents know, all the family and friends know, he’s safe, nobody is going to harm him.
”That’s the big message. When he’s ready to come home, let us know, we’ll come pick him up. He’s not in trouble at all. We love him more than anything in our life.”
