A search is underway for a missing three-year-old boy whose mother allegedly sent him to her male friend’s home to learn ‘how to be a man’.
Elijah Vue was last seen last Tuesday around 8am in the town of Two Rivers, Wisconsin. Cops received a call from a ‘caregiver’ reporting him missing less than three hours later.
The boy’s mother, Katrina Baur, 31, sent him away from their Wisconsin Dells home to her partner Jesse Vang, who lives about 150 miles away, at least a week before Elijah vanished.
Baur ‘intentionally sent that child for disciplinary reasons’, Manitowoc County District Attorney Jacalyn LaBre said during a bond hearing on Friday.
The mother told police that she wanted Vang to teach her son ‘how to be a man’, states a criminal complaint obtained by the Herald Times Reporter.
Vang, 39, said he was supposed to create a ‘boot camp’ of sorts to make Elijah ‘understand that going home is like a privilege for him’.
The ‘caregiver’ told cops that he fell asleep and woke up to find the boy missing, according to court documents obtained by NBC 26. An Amber alert was activated last Tuesday.
Elijah is described as being of Hmong and white ethnicity and with brown eyes and dark brown hair. He is about 3 feet tall and has a birthmark on his left knee. He was wearing gray pants, a dark long-sleeve shirt and dinosaur shoes.
On Monday, Baur and Vang appeared in court and both were charged with child neglect. Baur was also also charged with obstruction, WLUK reported. Baur is being held on a $15,000 cash bond while Vang’s cash bond amount is $20,000.
Both are due back for preliminary hearing son March 7.
The search for Elijah continues and anyone with information on Elijah’s whereabouts is urged to contact the Two Rivers Police Department. Two Rivers is about 90 miles north of Milwaukee.
‘We’re all out here for the same reason, to find that little boy,’ a local resident, Maria Wright, told ABC 2 News.
‘When you see everybody you know that we are a team. Your community is one big team. We’re going to keep on and the search is going to go on and on until we find this little boy.’
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