Cops are getting desperate in their ongoing search for little Patrick Alford.
After exhausting almost every possible lead, cops underwent the morbid duty of “beating the weeds” along the Brooklyn-Queens border near his foster family’s Starrett City/Spring Creek apartment building for the child’s remains.
Over 100 officers joined in the April 8 search, which turned up nothing but animal bones, according to an NYPD spokesman.
Alford, 7, was last seen leaving the lobby of his foster family’s Vandalia Avenue building on January 22 after threatening to run away.
Police dogs tracked his scent to a bus stop two blocks away. From there, this case doesn’t become cold, it freezes over, with no one biting at a $12,000 reward for information about the child’s whereabouts or anyone involved in his disappearance.
In the intervening months, investigators, some on loan from the Canarsie’s 69th Precinct, have tried to connect Alford’s disappearance to his biological mother, Jennifer Rodriguez, who apparently knew where Alford’s foster parents lived.
Alford was taken away from Rodriguez after she was arrested for theft and the city’s Administration of Children’s Services found her to be an unfit caregiver.
Detectives questioned Rodriguez repeatedly, but ultimately ruled her out as a suspect after she underwent a lie detector test.
Cops also investigated leads that Alford may have run off to relatives as far away as Baltimore and Florida, but none of these leads panned out, officials said.
Alford is described as 4’8” and 65 pounds. He was last seen wearing a red T-shirt, blue jeans and black sneakers.
Anyone with information about his disappearance or current whereabouts is urged to contact police at (800) 577-TIPS.
