Missing Blind Teen Found Safe

CORAL SPRINGS (CBS4) – It was a tearful reunion Tuesday afternoon as a mother was reunited with her blind son, who was missing for hours.

When the teen was reunited with his mother she wanted to know why he disappeared.

"Why did you do this to me? I fed you, I gave you clothes. I just want to know why," The boy's mother, Duielimene Tima, asked him in Creole.

"Because I was upset," 15-year-old Roosevelt Thermitus said.

According to Coral Springs Police Spokesman Lt. Joe McHugh, Thermitus was found with friends not far from his home in the 79 hundred block of NW 35th Street. HcHugh said one of Thermitus' friends texted another friend to say that Thermitus was safe. After hearing the news, his friend contacted police.

Tima called police early Tuesday to report her son missing. She told them the last time she saw her son was when he was trying to get out of the front door of their residence.

"The last time they had contact with him was this morning at 2 a.m. He woke up and his mom told him he was not allowed to go out there and go back to sleep. After that he was a little upset because of that and that was the last time (she saw him)," said Tima's translator.

Tima said when she woke up around 6:30 a.m. she went to check on him, but he was gone.

Just after noon, the manager of a nearby Dunkin Donuts reported that Thermitus and several friends were in the restaurant from 4:19 a.m. until 5:30. After that, police said the teen went to a friend's house.

When he returned home CBS 4's Ted Scouten asked him, "Can you tell us where you were?"

He replied, "Do I really have to answer?"

But he did respond to other questions.

"Is everything OK?" he was asked.

"Ya," he replied.

"Nothing bad happened?"

"Naw," he said.

Police were very concerned after they heard of the teen's disappearance because there are a lot of canals in the neighborhood. Officials visited the Lighthouse School for the Blind, where he attends class, to see if any of his friends or classmates knew where he was.

McHugh said they were relieved after seeing the teen in a surveillance tape from a Dunkin' Donuts, which showed him and three other teens inside the store around 5:30 a.m. Police said the boys appeared friendly and were having a good time.

Coral Springs police were assisted in the search by bloodhounds from the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office and the Miami-Dade Police Department, along with deputies and helicopters from the Broward Sheriff's Office.