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FBI tests don't ID abandoned boy
CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) -- The FBI said Wednesday that comparison tests to determine whether a boy recently abandoned in Chicago is the same child who disappeared from North Carolina more than two years ago were inconclusive. FBI agent Ross Rice said that means the agency must now wait for the results of DNA tests to determine whether the boys are the same person. An official said they expect those results "by the end of the week." "Everything that we tried -- family interviews, medical records, birth records ... has come back inconclusive," Rice said. Earlier, Rice said the FBI was comparing dental impressions, fingerprints and blood samples. State and local investigators have already taken DNA samples from the boy in Chicago -- whom officials said appears to be between 6 and 8 years old -- and the missing boy's birth mother to prove whether they are related. It could take six weeks to determine whether the boy known as Eli Quick is really Tristen "Buddy" Myers. Buddy's family has been anxiously waiting for the DNA test results. "I'm just praying this is him," said Donna Myers, Buddy's great-aunt. His room has remained intact since he vanished. A blue spread with pictures of bulldozers and dump trucks covers his bed. Buddy disappeared October 5, 2000, from his great-aunt's home in Roseboro, North Carolina, where she and the child had napped in the same room after a doctor's visit, Myers said. But while his great-aunt continued to sleep, Buddy left the house with his dogs, three-legged Buck and a Doberman puppy, Sasha. Buck returned five days later and Sasha five days after that.
If the boy in Chicago is Buddy Myers, his estranged mother wants him back and will go to court to seek custody. Raven Myers, a 22-year-old topless dancer, had joint custody of Buddy after giving birth to him in Louisiana at age 15. After Raven Myers' mother became terminally ill, Buddy was taken to live with his great-aunt and great-uncle in Roseboro. "I want him to have the kind of relationship he needs to have with his momma, which is me," Raven Myers said. She has custody of a daughter age 1 1/2. On Tuesday, FBI agents picked up Ricky Quick, the 33-year-old man who abandoned the 6-year-old at an Evanston, Illinois, hospital in February. Agents found Quick at the Chicago home he shares with his mother and took him to their headquarters for questioning. The FBI said Quick went with the agents voluntarily and was not in custody. Quick said Wednesday he has not been charged. He said the boy identified as Eli Quick is his stepson. "I'm very sick," he said. "I've been through a lot. I'm trying to get things together," he said in a television interview. Colorado crashQuick told Evanston hospital workers when he brought the boy in that he wanted Eli evaluated for "aggressive behavior," said Jill Manuel of the Illinois Department of Family and Children's Services. Hospital workers saw the boy was extremely dirty and needed a change of clothes, Manuel said. Quick threatened to leave Eli at the hospital, prompting workers to report him.
Chicago authorities arrested Quick on an outstanding theft warrant, but he was later released and never came back for the boy. Eli told social workers in Chicago that his mother, Sharon Smith, died in a car wreck in Colorado last year, and Colorado state troopers Tuesday identified the interstate wreck he apparently was referring to. Master Trooper Ron Watkins said his agency got in touch with Chicago authorities after seeing Eli's face on a television news report. Colorado State Police records show a woman named Sharon Smith died when her car overturned on Interstate 76 in northeast Colorado last May. Also in the car were Ricky Quick, Eli, and three young girls. Watkins said troopers assumed they were a family. Ricky Quick said Wednesday the couple had been married 17 years and that Eli is his stepson. He said his wife had an extra-marital affair which produced Eli. Eli was the most seriously injured of the survivors, Watkins said. He spent three days recovering at Denver Health Hospital before Ricky Quick signed him out. An official with the Washington County (Colorado) coroner's office said he remembers Ricky Quick as evasive during questioning after the accident. Quick also said his first name was Ricky and, later, Tony, prompting law enforcement officials to call in the Colorado Bureau of Investigation about identities of the four children, but the CBI closed the investigation soon after. The Colorado accident case remained closed until this week, when the apparent connection prompted troopers to reopen it, Watkins said. After Ricky Quick was arrested in Chicago, Eli went into foster care. He was unable to tell social workers his birthday or much information about his family. Social workers contacted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and found Eli bears a strong resemblance to Buddy Myers. Waiting and hopingDonna Myers has seen photographs of Eli and said he looks like her nephew. "If it's not him, he's got a twin," she said. "His eyes are the same, his ears, the scar on the side of his neck, his mouth -- everything seems to be pointing that it's him." Buddy's mother was a juvenile when she gave birth in Louisiana, which made her ineligible for custody under state law, a spokeswoman for the Myers family said. She believes Eli is her son. Raven Myers, so-named because her mother was a fan of Edgar Allen Poe, said she has never met Ricky Quick. "I've never met him. I've never seen this man, except on TV last night," Myers said. "I would remember a face like that, and I don't remember him." Raven Myers' parents took custody of Buddy but had to give him up when the grandmother became terminally ill. The grandparents gave Buddy to the grandfather's brother and sister-in-law, John and Donna Myers, who were in the process of formally adopting the boy when he was last seen, the spokeswoman said. Raven Myers said she was questioned after Buddy disappeared and took a lie detector test to prove she had nothing to do with her son's disappearance. She said she and her aunt and uncle, Donna and John Myers, are not on good terms. "I have nothing bad to say about them," she said Wednesday. "I know they care about him, but I will fight for Tristen not to go back in that home." Donna Myers said the day the boy disappeared started with a trip to the doctor's office. Afterward, she and Buddy came home and sang along to a Barney tape before the boy feel asleep on the floor as he played with the professional wrestling action figures his aunt had recently bought him, Myers said. Myers said she fell asleep in the same room. When she awoke, Buddy was gone. Myers said she checked to see if Buddy had gone up the road to look at some horses he loved. When she didn't find him there, Myers called 911, she said. John Myers kept a picture of Buddy on his truck until recently. He switched trucks and is in the process of putting the photo on his new one, said Jackie Jacobs, a family spokeswoman.
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