This is just terrible. No parent should ever have to experience this. The dismembered remains of 9-year-old Hasidic boy Leiby Kletsky were discovered in two Brooklyn locations. Police have arrested a 35-year-old man who had the child’s severed feet in his freezer.
Police found Kletsky’s body after raiding a home in the Kensington section of Brooklyn, where they found the suspect, who led them to parts of Kletsky’s body stuffed in a suitcase and hidden in a Dumpster outside of an auto shop about two miles away.
Kletsky disappeared Monday afternoon after becoming lost when walking alone for the first time from his Borough Park day camp. He was supposed to meet his parents only seven blocks away.
Police have not released the name of the suspect.
Sources say the man was tracked down by officers tracing credit card transactions and video surveillance that showed the boy walking behind a bearded man on 45th Street and Dahill Road before possibly getting into a gold-colored car.
Witnesses who saw police raid the suspect’s home at E. 2nd St. and Avenue C recognized the handcuffed, bearded man from surveillance videos. A gold-colored car was also found at the residence, and investigators were seen going over the vehicle inch by inch.
Kletsky was last seen on surveillance video around 45th Street and Dahill Road walking behind a bearded man in a white shirt and dark pants.
“The boy is standing alone at some point. The male crosses the street in his direction, and the boy follows him on Dahill Road,” said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne, adding that it’s unclear whether the pair exchanged words.
The man — who Browne described as “a person of interest” — is seen driving off in a gold, possibly Japanese-make car, although “we don’t know for certain whether the boy had gotten into the vehicle or not,” he said.
Leibby’s distraught dad, Nachman, a passenger-van driver with five daughters, reviewed the earlier footage, “He had tears in his eyes,” said Moishe Lefkovitz, the manager of the locksmith shop at 44th Street and 15th Avenue where the surveillance footage was taken.
“He kept shaking his head, saying, ‘Where are you going? Where are you going? What are you doing?’ ”
Authorities say the boy was videoed walking alone from the Boyan Day Camp at a school on 44th Street near 12th Avenue at 4:50 p.m. Monday after returning from a class trip to Manhattan Beach Park.
Leibby — who usually takes the bus — was allowed to leave camp on foot so he could meet his mom and dad just seven blocks away, where they had a doctor’s appointment.
The couple even took special pains to repeatedly go over the boy’s walking route with him, a pal said.
The child had instructions to walk up 44th Street to 13th Avenue and then turn right on 13th Avenue and walk straight across to 50th Street, said a family friend, Rabbi Bernard Freilich.
“It sounded like he wasn’t an expert on the streets,” Freilich said.
Surveillance shows the boy walking out the front door on 44th Street toward 13th Avenue, as instructed, but instead of turning right toward the meeting spot, he kept going.
Video footage from the locksmith shop shows him on that corner at around 5:20 p.m. The last known footage of him with the man was recorded between 5:30 and 5:45 p.m.
His parents waited until 7 p.m. before contacting the Shomrim, the local civil-patrol group. Shomrim contacted the NYPD at 8 p.m.
Officers and search dogs, aided by the scent of Leibby’s personal belongings — including of his black leather shoes — flooded the school looking for clues. An estimated 3,000 volunteers — including busloads from Hasidic communities in Lakewood, NJ, and Monsey, NY — joined the search.
So sad. There are some truly sick people in this world.
R.I.P. Leibby
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