Aspies For Freedom

Reward may be offered in death
Family, law enforcement seeks answers after 4-year-old dies
By ADAM BEAM

Summer Vale Court is a parking lot. Aunts, uncles, friends and neighbors huddle outside.

Up the street, through a traffic circle and around a corner is a single, white flower tied to a balloon. It’s a few yards from an electronic sign flashing at motorists, pleading for information about a hit and run at 4 a.m. Saturday that killed 4-year-old Xavier Tobias Moore.

Xavier was autistic, according to his father. Autistic children have a neurodevelopmental condition that impairs social, communication and behavioral functioning.

Xavier liked to draw and watch Scooby-Doo. In the middle of the night, sometimes he would get out of bed in search of a drink of water. But nothing like this had happened, his father said.

For some reason, Xavier got out of bed early Saturday morning, turned on a light and walked out the front door. State troopers found him at about 4 a.m. on Hard Scrabble Road at the entrance of his subdivision.

His father had put him to bed Friday night — finally — at about midnight. His aunt, Patricia Brockington, had been on the phone with Xavier’s father and heard the whole thing.

“Xavier was just being Xavier, full of energy,” she said.

Tobias Moore, who owns a pressure-washing business, is an early riser. But when he got up at 4 a.m. Saturday, he found a light on in his house, his front door standing open and his son’s bed empty.

Panic ensued. He got in the car and drove through the neighborhood, looking for his son. His wife, Austin, called 911. When he came back, Austin Moore decided to drive to the next-door neighborhood and look there.

The sirens at the top of the hill stopped her.

She stopped and told a state trooper that her 4-year-old boy had somehow gotten out of the house and that she was looking for him. He told her he would follow her home.

That’s when the Moores got the bad news. Tobias Moore would later go to the hospital to identify his son’s body. State troopers have not released information about a vehicle description.

Xavier did not have a history of trying to leave the house, his father said. Family members have decided to pool their money and come up with a reward for information about the incident.

“We’re not a family of vengeance,” Brockington said. “We just want to know what happened.”

Xavier’s death is tragedy compounded. The family had just buried his grandmother five months ago, the victim of a heart attack. The grandmother was Tobias Moore’s mother.

Tobias Moore was in a daze. He stood outside his house Sunday night, talking on a portable telephone receiver and greeting people as they arrived. Xavier’s mother was inside, wrapped in a blanket of family.

The family said Xavier’s autism impaired his speech. He was enrolled at a special pre-school program at Windsor Elementary and was learning to communicate. But his family always knew what he needed.

For now, the family take comfort in each other. They hope that someone will come forward and take responsibility and answer their questions.
From thestate.com

The fact that the child was autistic has nothing to do with what happened.  Lots of four year old children have no sense (I have a class full of that age group) and see no reason to only leave the house when the sun's up.  That's why we need child-proof locks on our doors, whether the child is AS or not.  And again, four year olds have no idea of road safety.  It's a tragedy, but I believe it happened not because the kiddie was autistic but because he was of the age group that does that sort of thing.
Alison

I disagree, it's very rare to hear of four year olds leaving the house and wandering off, and we see numerous cases of autistic children doing this.
The child may be less aware and get confused in the night, parents need to be aware of this and take it into account and have more safety measures.

I agree with this. It's yet again another attempt of the media's NT majority to portray Autistics as weak-minded, confused, etc - when in actual fact, most normal four year olds are ****-heads anyway. But I don't think we should start institutionalising the youngin's (putting locks on doors, etc)... perhaps some evil rehab-edu-program teaching road safety to four-year-old 0-IQ's (aspie or not) could help?

I have no idea if this is a greater risk for autistics or not ... I DO know that I wandered out of the house early one morning when I was just 2 year olds.  My mom told me about it making sure I had the doors properly secured when my children were young.

In many ways, though, my Aspie son is less of a risk for these things than my NT daughter.  My son would run away as a toddler, but most toddler boys do.  Once he hit 5 or so he really understood the need to "stay together" and I can really count on him for that.  My 5 year old daughter, however, worries me.  She is going on a camp field trip to an amusement park and I will probably go along ... my husband notes that I didn't feel the need when my son was 5, but she is different ... maybe I just haven't taught her as firmly since she didn't do the toddler thing, but still ... hard to describe, but she worries me.  She WOULD wander off in the middle of the night if she felt like it.  She is so stubborn and so confident ... she simply never sees any reason not to have things her way.

As my mom tells it, that was my attitude at 2.  So confident I saw no reason not to have things my way.

Sigh.

It's just so very tragic ... my heart breaks for those parents.

"a hit and run at 4 a.m."

The hit and run driver is the cause of the tragedy.  The driver may have not seen the child in time to stop if the child had run out in the street - but the driver did not stop, call police or emergency services, did not offer aid.

There is a strong chance the driver remained unaware of what happened.  A small child stands below the window height of a car.  I am ALWAYS reminding my children of this.  The driver may have thought he hit a speed bump or small animal.  I can't judge without knowing more.