Crime & Safety
Manning Makes 2nd Call Home; Whereabouts Still Unknown
Missing Brookfield teen Henry Manning makes contact again as search goes into second week.
The Manning family received a second phone call on Wednesday from , however his whereabouts are still unknown and police, for the teen that has now been missing for two weeks.
early Wednesday morning, around 2:40 a.m., and spoke with his mother, Jenan, who said he sounded “confused” and “contradicted a lot of what he said.”
At one point in the conversation, which lasted between 20 minutes and a half hour, Manning said he was in Maine, while later he said he was getting meals at the Occupy Wall Street encampment at Union Square in New York City.
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“I asked him, ‘How could that be if you’re in Maine,’ and then he would get quiet,” Jenan said Friday, worried that his disorganized thinking may be a symptom of his mental disability. “He’s a very smart boy — if he were making it up, it would have been more fluid.”
, which prevents him from observing and understanding social cues and makes him more trusting of strangers.
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“It’s a lack of filtering when he meets people,” Jenan explained, resulting in “over sharing” and a tendency to “walk off with anyone.”
Jenan said she had seen this kind of sporadic, unorganized thinking from her son before, when he was being evaluated at the hospital.
“The fact that we heard from Henry doesn’t change anything, we’re still concerned,” she added. “We’re concerned that maybe Henry could be relapsing.”
Det. Sgt. Michael O’Brien said Friday that police are following up on these new leads, but there still have been no confirmed sightings of Manning.
“With no confirmed sightings, we are not making any assumptions as to Henry’s location,” O’Brien said. “We are investigating all credible leads, including the possibility that he may be in New York City,” while working with municipal police in four states, the Connecticut State Police, FBI and National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
“We are planning to continue with our investigation until Henry comes home or until a law enforcement officer can make contact with him and assess his physical and mental status,” he added.
For now, the family waits and prays.
“He said, ‘I’ll call you tomorrow” during the March 21 call, Jenan said, but after waiting all Thursday to hear from him, she was disappointed.
“Henry has had a lot of struggles and a lot of issues,” she said. “We just don’t understand the circumstances of why he’s off the grid now.”
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