LOWER EAST SIDE, Manhattan (PIX11) — A mother who just moved her teen son and his sister to Pennsylvania a month ago was pleading for help to find the teen,15, after he failed to show up at his grandmother’s house on East Fourth Street in Manhattan on Monday.
“This is not normal for my son,” Korina Gerena, the boy’s mom, said when she phoned PIX11 News asking for help. “We were on 11th Street and Avenue C. I was at my boyfriend’s mother’s house. He was going to my grandmother’s house, and he never arrived.”
The worried mom said she called 911, and police from the Ninth Precinct arrived.
But when she explained the family had moved to Pennsylvania, Gerena said officers told her the missing persons case wouldn’t be in their jurisdiction.
Gerena said she had taken away her son’s cell phone for the summer after he didn’t do well in school during his last semester. She said her son had been attending University Neighborhood High School on Monroe Street, which she called “an excellent school.”
Now the mom is worried her son might have been influenced by other teens he met on the Lower East Side.
“I was getting phone calls from students at the school,” Gerena said. “They were telling me his friends are not his true friends.”
We asked Gerena what his interests are.
“He likes to skateboard,” Gerena said. “He’s very good at drawing. He loves history. He wants to make maps when he gets older.”
The mother posted flyers on the Lower East Side and launched a social media campaign to find her son.
She said moving to Pennsylvania was an adjustment for her son.
“He was unhappy that he was so far from New York,” Gerena said, “but he was extremely happy to have his own room.”
