According to authorities, Julian was 5-years-old when he disappeared in 2002 after being reported missing by his mother.
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“You want to pick up and catch up, but how do you do that?” said police Lt. Johnny Evans of the Birmingham suburb of Vestavia Hills, where the boy once lived.
The boy’s mom reported him missing after he didn’t come back from a visit with his father in Seattle.
This undated photo provided by Cuyahoga County Prosecutors Office shows Bobby Hernandez. He is being held on a $250,000 bond.
A representative for Julian’s mother, who refused to be interviewed and has requested privacy, said in a statement: “Our family was overjoyed this week to locate Julian and learn that he is safe”. She never saw her son again. Julian went missing in Alabama at age 5. He took a few of the boy’s possessions with him, and withdrew cash from his bank accounts, according to The Charley Project. Evans said he doesn’t know much about what the young man has been doing, but he’s been told that Hernandez is a good student who seems well-adjusted. “We assumed he was going to be local, ” Evans said.
It wasn’t until last week that authorities got the tip they needed – and finally found him. “We had no contact information for this person”. Police said that they were aware of the Reddit threat, but that they had not confirmed that the user was Julian.
He said his client seemed to know the consequences could, in fact, one day come. I hope to resolve this as quickly as possible, so that I might still have time to get scholarships for college.
Whether Julian new the truth about his unusual circumstances before the college application remains unclear.
newsnet5.com reached out to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children about Hernandez’ case. “And when he started the process, that’s when things kind of started coming together”.
“She was very happy that he had been found, quite ecstatic, but she was also somewhat hesitant because there had been so many false leads through the years”, York said.
Bobby Hernandez’s attorney said Friday that his client was initially on suicide watch after being arrested Monday and was given medication to calm him. No federal charges are expected. His attorney said his client has never been convicted of a felony. “The question will be if what he did is considered lawful custody”. WVTM-TV in Birmingham said Julian went to a school counselor after his Social Security number couldn’t be verified and subsequently found himself listed on the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) database.
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On November 1, 2015 the Vestavia Hills Police Department was contacted by Federal Bureau of Investigation Agents from Cleveland, Ohio in regard to a missing child from Vestavia Hills.
