Parents not giving up hope on Baby Ralston
Published:Friday | July 8, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Anastasia Cunningham, Senior Gleaner Writer
Six months after their two-year-old son disappeared without a trace, baby Ralston's parents are still hopeful of seeing him again.
Father Neville Mitchell and mother Danna Emmanuel still regularly look out into the front yard, hoping to see little Augustus Neville Mitchell walking down the steep, rocky path to their small, humble home.
"Up to Friday, mi go market and somebody ask mi if me nah give up on him and me shout out, 'No, mi nah give up. Mi baby nuh dead'," said the saddened mother.
"This rough, believe me, it rough. Mi have a pain in mi belly that just won't guh nowhere. Anything can go so doe, eeh? In all my years, I never see anything like this."
Not even the love of her seven other children can ease the pain.
Mysteriously disappeared
On January 6, Baby Ralston disappeared under mysterious circumstances from his community of Albion Mountains in deep rural St Thomas. His parents, along with the Cedar Valley and Morant Bay police, have been searching for him ever since, but to no avail.
For days, there was a frantic search for the child afflicted with sickle cell in the heavily vegetated terrain, thinking he had got lost in the bushes, but with no luck.
It was later believed that someone had taken him and at one point there was news that his mother's cellphone, which he had in his pocket at the time of his disappearance, was tracked to somewhere in St Catherine, but that lead went cold.
"This is very hard to cope with, but we just trying to bear it. Mi know sey him not dead. I have a very strong belief I will find him and we not giving up," said his father.
"We just here waiting. We have not heard anything from the police in a long time."
District Constable Steven Duffus, from the Cedar Valley Police Station, told The Gleaner that until this day, there remains no word on the child's whereabouts.
"We don't know if he is alive or dead. This one is a real mystery," said Duffus.
For now, the family is trying to return to some sense of normality, going about their farming duties. But they are convinced, without any doubt, that Baby Ralston will return to them one day.