The parents of 4-year-old Lucian Munguia are pleading for the community to help search the Yakima park where their little boy disappeared.
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‘Please don’t wait’: Missing Yakima boy’s parents speak out, plead for help with search
His name is Lucian Munguia and he’s a 4-year-old boy with long, beautiful hair, who plays and laughs, loves fish and enjoys playing with his big brother. He’s also been missing for more than 72 hours.
“If you have him, just drop him off where he’s gonna be found and just let him go,” Lucian’s mother Sandra Munguia told KAPP-KVEW on Tuesday. “He wants to come home. My 2-year-old daughter misses him. My 6-year-old misses him. We miss him.”
Munguia said it started with a family trip Saturday evening to Sarg Hubbard Park in Yakima. Her husband, Juano, had just arrived with 4-year-old Lucian, their 6-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter.
Kids in tow, Munguia said her husband parked right next to the playground. He was changing their daughter’s diaper in the car as the boys got out to play on the hill, which she said is still within view of where they were parked.
“Within a minute, just a blink of an eye, he was gone,” Munguia said.
Yakima Police Chief Matt Murray told KAPP-KVEW in an interview Tuesday that investigators found video that shows Lucian leaving the park in a southeast direction by himself and that they do not suspect foul play.
“He left the park by himself. That’s what we know for a fact,” Murray said. “What happened after that? Well, that, we may still have to find but we’ve had detectives scouring this entire area, looking for people with video, businesses with video.”
Munguia said they feel in their hearts like someone may have taken their son, because they don’t believe he’s hiding. She said he doesn’t really understand the concept of hiding when they play hide-and-seek and comes out before he’s ever found.
“He won’t even go hide … He’ll follow my son to go play hide-and seek and then he gives away my son,” Munguia said.
Munguia said while Lucian does have autism, he isn’t nonverbal like has been posted in several places on social media.
“His English is broken up,” Munguia said. “It’s not full sentences, but he still talks. There is talking.”
Munguia said what they need right now, more than anything, is for volunteers from the community to help search for her son, especially now that authorities have scaled back on their resources.
Munguia is encouraging people to come meet with family members, who are stationed near the playground at Sarg Hubbard Park, 111 S. 18th St. in Yakima. They’re asking searchers to check in so they can direct them to the next area that needs to be covered.
She said businesses have discouraged volunteers from parking in the lots adjacent to the park, but that spots are available in the parking lot near the Yakima Greenway sign as you enter the park and up by the playground.
If people aren’t able to dedicate time to the search, they can come down to pick up missing person flyers with Lucian’s name and photo on it and distribute them across town, give them to local businesses or even tape them to their cars.
Munguia said they’ve received help with printing those flyers from Print Guys and other printing shops around town.
“They’re donating a lot of flyers every day,” Munguia said.
Munguia said they’ve received a lot of messages from people reporting seeing something or hearing something odd hours or even days prior. She said they want people to report things happening as they happen.
“Not two hours later … Just take a second to drop what you’re doing and call 911,” Munguia said. “Please don’t wait until two hours after it happens. We need to know that moment.”
If you want to help in other ways not mentioned here, family members said you can come talk to them at the Sarg Hubbard Park playground. At least one of them will be staying there 24/7 until Lucian is found, with some even sleeping in their cars to stay close to the search area.
