HASANNI CAMPBELL - 5 yo with CP (2009) - Oakland CA

This week marks one year since a little boy named Hasanni Campbell was reported missing.
He has not been seen since.
In the past 363 days, the missing child's case has received lots of media attention, but little
public interest. Vigils often drew as few as five people and weekend
searches consisted of only a dozen dedicated strangers. In the
beginning his foster parents and some family members took part in the
vigils and the searches, but they have faded away along with any leads in the case.
Hasanni's foster father Louis Ross reported him missing from the parking lot on College Ave. in the late afternoon of Aug. 10.
The boy's foster mother, Jennifer Campbell, is also his biological aunt.
She and Ross were expecting a child together at the time of Hasanni's disappearance.
The couple was arrested early on in the case but released due to a lack of evidence.
They have both moved out of the Bay Area.
The one woman who still speaks up on behalf of the child is Sherri-Lynn Miller.
Miller is a t-shirt maker by trade and volunteered early in the case to help in any way she could.
Although she had never met Hasanni for the last several months Miller
is the only one who continues to speak on his behalf. Miller, along
with Tena Oakley, Celina Carleton, Gary Savell Sr and Jr. and Wayne
Slack founded the group Citizens for the Lost Society which
opened its headquarters at her San Leandro print shop this weekend.
Miller says she still believes one or both of Hasanni's foster parents
have information they are not telling authorities about his disappearance.
"Louis Ross and Jennifer Campbell need to start telling the truth," Miller told reporters.
To mark the one year anniversary Tuesday, Miller and a few others will meet with Alameda
County Chief Deputy District Attorney Tom Rogers to discuss any
possible new developments in the case. Investigators consider this a homicide case.
On Tuesday a rally will be held outside the D.A. office in Oakland at 4 p.m.
By Sunday afternoon, Facebook organizers said they only knew of 14 people who would be attending the rally.
Miller could obviously use some help in her effort to find a little boy who spent all of his short
life here in the Bay Area. She can be contacted at (510) 276-9090 or
e-mail to findhasanni@gmail.com.

Even the most dedicated volunteers in the search for Hasanni Campbell
fear they will never find any trace of the missing 5-year-old with
cerebral palsy who disappeared one year ago today.
"We pretty much know we are searching for a body, but we still need
to find him," said Sherri-Lyn Miller, founder of Citizens for the Lost, a
civilian search and rescue organization.
The group, which began looking for Hasanni the day he went missing,
may have to face the probability that the young boy has perished, but
its primary focus is to ensure Campbell's case remains active.
The group has scheduled a rally outside the Alameda County District Attorney's
office today at 2 p.m. to renew public interest in
the case. Miller and Gail Steele, an Alameda County supervisor, are
scheduled to meet with the district attorney's office afterward, Miller said.
A lot has happened in the year since Hasanni disappeared - but
unfortunately, little has changed with the investigation to find him.
Sadly, neither police nor volunteers are any closer to knowing what
happened to the youngster on Aug. 10, 2009. An extensive search
conducted by city, county and federal authorities who canvassed the
community with canines yielded no sign of him.
His foster father, Louis Ross, maintains that the boy was last seen
inside his car parked in the Rockridge neighborhood. Ross and his
then-fiancee, Jennifer Campbell, the boy's aunt, issued tearful pleas
for his return. Then police disclosed that Ross had sent Campbell
expletive-laden text messages, threatening to abandon Hasanni on a BART
train platform.
Ross and Campbell were arrested Aug. 27 but later released due to a lack of evidence.
The couple gave birth to their first child in November and moved to Arizona from the Bay Area
last February, authorities said. Since then, the couple have split and
Ross moved to Maryland to be closer to his own family members.
Miller and others, meanwhile, continue the search.
"I made a promise in the beginning that I wasn't going to stop until we found Hasanni," Miller said.
It has been a year to the day since Miller contacted the Oakland
police and asked for a printout of the flyer posted to find the boy.
Miller, who owned a San Leandro print shop, produced 10,000 flyers
and T-shirts, then drove to Oakland around 8 a.m. and started looking for the boy.
Since that day, Miller has organized civilian searches involving more
than 100 volunteers and stepped on the toes of law enforcement
officials on more than one occasion.
Oakland police initially discredited the group's efforts, saying they did not condone civilian searches.
At Fremont's Central Park
last spring, a San Jose police search and rescue team was admonished
both for volunteering their services and crossing jurisdictional
boundaries without permission, she said.
A rally held six months after Hasanni disappeared also produced a
weekend search conducted by police that was not publicized, Miller pointed out.
"If it weren't for us, this case would have died last year," Miller
said. "We put police in a situation where they had to respond. Do you
think the six-month vigil was a mistake?"
If there is another reason that Miller decided to launch an
organization around the disappearance of Hasanni, it was because of the
outpouring of support for Sandra Cantu,
an 8-year-old Tracy girl reported missing on March 27, 2009. Her body
was found less than two weeks later in an irrigation ditch. Melissa
Huckaby, a 28-year-old Sunday schoolteacher, was convicted of her murder.
"I'd just finished a print job for them and saw all the support the
Cantu family had received," Miller said. "I just couldn't understand why
Hasanni's case hadn't received the same support."
Officially, the Hasanni Campbell case is still open, but there are no
new leads or evidence to chase down, authorities said.
"It's not a good thing to say, but the case of Hasanni Campbell has
gone cold," said Officer Holly Joshi, a spokeswoman for the Oakland Police Department.
"We're going to keep the case open because it's a priority for us," Joshi added.
"There has to be someone out there who has some information, no
matter how small, and it could be the piece that breaks it open for us."

Elisa Aguilera's daughter
was 17 when she was shot to death in December of 2008. The teen's
19-year-old boyfriend was arrested and later convicted of her murder.
Last week, Armando Vera was sentenced to 21 years in prison for the
slaying of Melissa Lopez, Aguilera said. The loss of a child to
violence is a pain few parents can comprehend. So to honor the memory of
her daughter, Aguilera, the owner of Elle Salon and Spa in San Leandro,
is hosting a fundraiser Sunday to support the organization working to
find Hasanni Campbell -- the Fremont boy who went missing more than a
year ago.The Citizens for the Lost Society has held yard sale
fundraisers, vigils, rallies and other events to keep Hasanni's name in
the public's eye and raise money to cover the costs of searches. "My
daughter would be proud of me for doing these things," Aguilera said.
"I want to help others that are going through the pain that I went
through and am going through."Between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Sunday,
the salon will have raffles, a barbecue, beauty treatments and beauty
supplies available for purchase, children's activities and free popcorn.
Men's haircuts will be available for $10. The salon is at 197 Pelton
Center Way in San Leandro. For more information, call 510-352-7445.
Aguilera is donating all proceeds from Sunday to the CFL Society.Hasanni, who was born with cerebral palsy, was 5 when he was reported missing Aug. 10, 2009, from the rear driveway of Shuz of Rockridge, a shoe store on College Avenue.The
boy's then-foster father, Louis Ross, told police he left the child
alone when he went to the front of the store to alert Jennifer Campbell,
the boy's aunt and then-foster mother, that he had arrived to drop off
Hasanni and the boy's 1-year-old sister.The boy has not been seen
since. The couple lost custody of the girl and have left the area,
police said. Ross is still considered a prime suspect in the case,
police said. For more information, call the CFL Society at 510-315-2321 or e-mail citizens- forthelost@gmail.com. The group's website is www.citizensforthelost.com.

'America's Missing': Hasanni Campbell, 5, vanishes outside shoe store


Hasanni Campbell, 5, was last seen on August 10, 2009.



Editor's note: HLN is airing a special "Nancy Grace: America’s Missing" with the goal of trying to find 50 people over the next 50 days. Nancy Grace will take a look at several cases around the nation in hopes of helping to solve them.

Hasanni Campbell, who suffers from cerebral palsy and wears braces on both legs, went missing after being with his father outside a shoe in Oakland, California on August 10, 2009.

His foster father, Louis Ross, remains the prime suspect in the missing person case. He was the last to see the 5-year-old boy after leaving him in the car and going into the store with his sister. Suspicion has surrounded Hasanni’s foster parents who were both arrested on suspicion of murder but were never charged.

"Born on September 24, 2003, the first few of years of his life were not the most ideal but that withstanding there is a potential in him that many overlook because of a lack of understanding about his condition," his family says on a missing person's website.

"Diagnosed with Cognitive Delays and Cerebral Palsy, umbrella term used to describe a disease that affects a person's motor skills, Hasanni is not unlike any other child. Some of his favorite things are SpongeBob, Spiderman, playing in the little pool we have set up in the backyard, and being read to. Hasanni loves the water. He would always ask, is it going to rain today? or Is that the beach as we drove home?

"If you saw him you would most likely think of him as a child small for his age that would seem talkative or quiet depending on his mood at that time."

For more information on Campbell, his description, and information to contact authorities, visit Nancy Grace's blog.

Fremont boy featured on cable's show 'Missing Kids On Demand'

By Kristin J. Bender
Oakland Tribune

Posted: 08/24/2011 12:16:57 PM PDT

Hasanni Campbell, the Fremont boy who went missing two years ago in Oakland,
will be featured this month on a Comcast show about missing children.
Hasanni
was 5 when he disappeared Aug. 10, 2009, from behind a shoe store on
College Avenue in the Rockridge district. At the time, he was in the
care of Louis Ross, his former foster father. No one has been arrested
in the case.
Hasanni is one of an estimated 800,000 children
nationwide who are reported missing each year. As a public service,
Comcast recently launched Missing Kids On Demand and online at xfinity.com/news/missingkids.
Hasanni
is African-American, with brown hair and brown eyes. He has cerebral
palsy and was 3 feet tall and weighed 40 pounds when he went missing. He
was last seen wearing a gray sweatshirt, gray pants and braces on his
ankles.
The TV show and the online version will be produced in
partnership with the National Center for Missing & Exploited
Children and will routinely rotate 20 video profiles of missing
children, including their names, city of the disappearance, possible
whereabouts, likely abductors and photos. Age-progressed photos will be
available for children who have been missing for a long period of time.
During
the airing, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's
hot line, 800-843-5678 will be displayed. Tips also can be reported at www.missingkids.com.


http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_18748079?nclick_check=1

The TV show and the online version will be produced in
partnership with the National Center for Missing & Exploited
Children and will routinely rotate 20 video profiles of missing
children, including their names, city of the disappearance, possible
whereabouts, likely abductors and photos. Age-progressed photos will be
available for children who have been missing for a long period of time.
During
the airing, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's
hot line, 800-843-5678 will be displayed. Tips also can be reported at www.missingkids.com.

This was my idea, this is what I wanted to do.
My ship came in and I was waiting at the airport!?!!

"Law and Order's" Lt. Anita Van Buren appears to be the best hope for missing little boy Hasanni Campbell. Campbell -- 5 years old at the time -- disappeared Aug. 10, 2009, from the Rockridge neighborhood in Oakland.

Actress Sharon Epatha Merkerson , who played policewoman Van Buren in more than 380 episodes of the primetime police drama, will host a recreation of Campbell's disappearance on "Find Our Missing," a television show that airs Wednesday, Jan. 18, on TVOne.

TVOne "delivers real life and entertainment programming from the African American point of view" according to its website and is available in about half of all American homes with cable, including San Francisco and Oakland.

The show will be dedicated to finding missing African Americans because "of a pervasive feeling among many blacks that their cases don't get as much attention as cases involving whites, particularly attractive young white women" says the Associated Press.

Indeed, Hasanni Campbell -- who is African American -- seems like just the sort of missing child television producers would normally feature: one of the few photographs of the strikingly handsome boy features an innocent expression and a jaunty blue mortarboard. He was handicapped, too, having to wear leg braces to compensate for his cerebral palsy.

"I do think It has something to do with race," said Oakland Tribune reporter Kristin Bender. "I think race plays a factor in a lot of missing cases. It's no secret if you're pretty and white you will get media attention. [Hasanni] had no one on his side. He was voiceless."

For a time, the Campbell case made news in the San Francisco Bay area. Volunteer groups scoured the trendy, upscale neighborhood -- though few volunteers came from the neighborhood itself.

A candlelight vigil attracted a few dozen -- though "at least half were reporters" recalls Bender. Bender is interviewed in the television segment.

"I wrote about their bake sales and fundraisers and car washes. It touched me, even though I'm not a parent," she said.

Suspicion turned quickly to the boy's foster father Louis Ross, who was the last to see the boy.

Ross and the boy's foster mother, Jennifer Campbell (Hasanni's biological aunt) were held and then released on a lack of evidence. The pair has left California and are apparently no longer a couple.

Oakland police repeatedly fingered Ross as the prime suspect, though earlier home inspections by San Francisco Department of Human Services found the couple to be "really good foster parents."

Ross says he drove Hasanni and his little sister to the Rockridge shoe store Jennifer Campbell managed. Ross said he left Hasanni in the car and returned to find the boy missing. Police suspect Hosanni had in fact disappeared days earlier.

The investigation remained a "priority" in 2010 according to then Oakland Police spokesperson Holly Joshi, though she said the detective in the case retired and police did not actively pursue the case further.

Criticism of Oakland Police grew after the police department discouraged volunteers and even other police agencies from searching for the boy. A volunteer group set up to find Hasanni gave up and tried to establish a summer camp in his name instead. The effort failed.

Another recent candlelight vigil to mark the anniversary of the disappearance attracted just two people.

The "Find Our Missing" episodes uses interviews with real-life reporters from the Oakland Tribune and Oakland police officers mixed with actors potraying Hasanni, Jennifer and Louis.

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Missing-Boys-Best-Hope-a-Pretend-Cop-137501368.html