Body parts of missing Brooklyn boy found in refrigerator

Killing of eight-year-old Leiby Kletzky has shocked Orthodox Jewish community in New York An eight-year-old boy who got lost while walking home alone was killed and dismembered by a stranger he had asked for directions. His remains were found stuffed in a rubbish bin and the man’s refrigerator, police said on Wednesday. The gruesome killing of Leiby Kletzky has shocked the Jewish community in Borough Park, Brooklyn, in part because it is one of the safest sections of New York and because the man under arrest is an Orthodox Jew. A day-and-a-half search for the boy ended with the discovery of his severed feet inside a freezer at the home of a man who had been spotted with the child on a surveillance video, police said. The rest of the remains were in bins in another neighbourhood. “It is every parent’s worst nightmare,” said police commissioner Raymond Kelly. The 35-year-old suspect, Levi Aron, had implicated himself in the killing, he said. Police said there was no evidence the boy was sexually assaulted, but they would not otherwise shed any light on a motive except to say Aron told them he “panicked” when he saw photos of the missing boy on fliers distributed in the neighbourhood. Police are looking into whether Aron has a history of mental illness. Aron was arrested on a charge of second-degree murder. The medical examiner’s office said it was still investigating how the boy was killed. Meanwhile, thousands gathered around a Borough synagogue for the boy’s funeral service, with speakers broadcasting over a loudspeaker. They spoke and chanted in Yiddish and Hebrew, stressing the community’s resilience and unity after what one called an unnatural death. Many of the mothers who gathered outside the Kletzky family home on Wednesday said the streets were normally safe enough for a child to walk home alone. Adel Erps, like other neighbours, expressed shock the suspect was Jewish. “It hurts so much more,” she said. Aron’s family was Orthodox but not Hasidic. When detectives arrived at his apartment at about 2.40am local time, they asked him where the boy was, and he nodded toward the kitchen, Kelly said. Detectives saw blood on the freezer door and opened it to discover the feet inside, wrapped in plastic bags. A cutting board and three bloody carving knives were in the refrigerator and a plastic rubbish sack with bloody towels was found nearby. Aron told police where to find the rest of the body. It was in pieces, wrapped in plastic bags, inside a red suitcase that had been placed into a rubbish bin in another part of Brooklyn, Kelly said. Police and volunteers had been looking since late Monday afternoon for Leiby, who disappeared while on his way to meet his mother on a street corner seven blocks from his day camp. It was the first time he was allowed to walk the route alone. His parents had taken him on a practice run on Friday. The break in the case came when investigators watched a grainy video that showed the boy, wearing his backpack, getting into a car with a man outside a dentist’s office. Leiby was last seen wearing dark pants and a short-sleeved shirt and yarmulke. Police said the boy had evidently missed a turn and got lost. Detectives tracked the dentist down to his home in New Jersey, and he remembered someone coming to pay a bill. Police identified Aron using records from the office, and 40 minutes later he was arrested. Kelly said it was “totally random” that Aron grabbed the boy and, aside from a summons for urinating in public, he had no criminal record. He had lived in New York most of his life and worked as a clerk at a hardware supply store around the corner from his home, authorities said. New York United States guardian.co.uk

Posted by on July 14, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.