OCTAVIO CABALLERO - 11 yo - Columbus OH

Columbus OH ---- Ten Columbus police detectives, along with patrol officers and dogs,
searched yesterday for an 11-year-old boy who disappeared Wednesday morning on the West Side.



Octavio Caballero walked past the school-bus stop and into woods at
the end of Rocky Road, where
he lives, at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, fellow students told police. But his parents said he had no reason to leave.
"I don't think he would run away because he didn't have money," his
mother, Damaris Perez, said last night.
Sgt. Terry McConnell, a detective with the police Sexual Assault
Unit, said Octavio is considered an endangered runaway, but police did not put out an Amber
Alert because "there is no specific evidence that he is in danger."
Police mounted a search because of his young age, McConnell said.
"You throw as many resources as you can on cases like this at the start."
Octavio has skipped school before but had never been missing
overnight, McConnell said.
Detectives have talked to all of the registered sex offenders in the
surrounding neighborhood and, in some cases, searched their houses, McConnell said. Police also
are following up on reports of people who said they saw Octavio later in the day Wednesday.
Octavio, who is Latino, is 5 feet, 1 inch tall; weighs 120 pounds;
and has brown eyes and brown hair. He was last seen wearing blue jeans, a blue T-shirt and black Nike
tennis shoes and carrying a black Nike book bag.
Octavio Caballero Sr., his father, went on TV last night to plead
with his son to come home. "And if you have our son," he said, "have a heart and give him back to us."

A missing Columbus boy returns home safe
Friday afternoon, and an on-scene officer says the 11-year-old said he
had been kidnapped.
Columbus police issued a missing-child
alert for endangered runaway Octavio Caballero, 11, Wednesday night.

He reportedly was seen last at about 6 or 6:30 p.m. Wednesday night
with an older male, in his 50s or 60s, in a neighborhood off Demorest
Road.

Octavio returned to his Southwest Side home safely shortly at about
2:45 p.m. Friday.

Neighbor Cary Dennis walked him back home after she says she spotted
him in her back yard.

Dennis said Octavio was hiding behind an electric box. She said he
looked scared. She also said Octvaio told her he had been abducted.

“I said, ‘Let me take you home,“ and I just took him around the
corner. As soon as he went around the corner, they yelled for him. They
just started coming for him,“ Dennis said.



Octavio told his mother and a Columbus police officer he was
kidnapped. He said he escaped out of a window.

CPD officers interviewed the boy for about two hours after his
return.

The investigation will continue.

Additional details were not available immediately.

Octavio’s family thanked everyone who helped in the effort to help
find the boy.

A boy who had been missing for more than two
days confesses to police that he fabricated a story about being
kidnapped.
Octavio Caballero, 11, returned home safe
Friday afternoon after being missing for more than two days.

The 11-year-old told his mother and a female officer he had been
kidnapped.

During a scheduled Saturday morning debriefing at CPD Headquarters,
Octavio told detectives he made up the story about the abduction,
according to CPD Sgt. Rich Weiner.

Weiner said it remained unknown where the boy was or what he was
doing during the time he was missing.

The boy was released into his father’s custody. Weiner said it’s now a
family matter and the case is closed.

CPD released the confession information to the media so the public
knows Octavio’s alleged abductors were fabricated.

When asked about whether Octavio was remorseful
about the amount of effort that went into the search for him, Weiner
explained the child is 11; the magnitude of what happened is probably
not on his radar.