United States:Residents of the comfortable St Louis suburb of Kirkwood, Missouri, were struggling at the weekend to understand how a kidnapped boy and his abductor could have lived among them for four years.
Shawn Hornbeck was found in the home of a 41-year-old man, Michael Devlin, on Thursday during a police search for William Ownby (13), known as Ben, who disappeared a week ago. Mr Devlin admitted kidnapping Ownby.
Mr Devlin's neighbours said they assumed Shawn was his son. They recounted that when they asked about his mother, the boy would cry and rush inside his apartment, saying she was dead.
Although Shawn did not attend school, he seemed like most boys, they said. Shawn would ride his bike around the area, had a friend who visited and seemed to have started seeing a girlfriend.
But they said Mr Devlin was aggressive and very private, hurrying between his car and his flat. The only contact neighbours had was when someone took his parking space. "If you're not parked in his parking spot, there's no trouble with that man," said Mario Emanuel, a neighbour.
Leafy Kirkwood boasts of its "involved residents". Yet many questioned how Mr Devlin could have kept a boy captive for so long and why the boy did not try to escape.
Shawn's stepfather, Craig Akers, told the Good Morning America television programme that his stepson feared for his life. "He's been held against his will and since that time he's been threatened with his life. He thought that . . . it would be the end of his life if he tried to tell anyone or do anything."
"I still feel like I'm in a dream, only this time it's a good dream, not the nightmare I've had to live for the past four-and-a-half years," said his mother, Pam.
On Thursday, officers serving a warrant in Mr Devlin's apartment complex noticed a white pick-up truck that matched a description of a vehicle seen when Ben Ownby was abducted.
- (Guardian service)