L.A. boy stows away,
ends up on Oahu streets

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By Dan Whitcomb
Reuters

LOS ANGELES >> A 12-year-old Los Angeles boy who disappeared last weekend has surfaced in Hawaii after apparently posing as a member of another family to sneak onto a flight to Honolulu, police said yesterday.

A Honolulu Police Department spokesman said the boy, who was raised by his grandparents in American Samoa and now lives with his mother in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne, made the trip after a visit by his grandfather.

"Apparently, the grandfather had been visiting (the boy and his mother) and left on the Friday to go back to Samoa," spokesman Joseph Self said.

"So the boy got up Saturday morning and decided he wanted to go back (with his grandfather)," Self said. "He just walked several miles to the airport, saw a family boarding that appeared to be Samoan and walked on the plane with them."

The boy got off the plane in Honolulu and walked around the island, getting lost and ending up about 10 miles away in the Waikiki Beach resort area, Self said.

Self said the boy made his way back to the airport on foot, where he caught the attention of authorities after allegedly trying to shoplift a necklace.

He said the boy, who had about $25 on him when he was found, apparently had slept in parks and used money he brought from home to buy food.

The boy's mother, who last saw him at their apartment complex Saturday morning, reported him missing last weekend, prompting a search by Hawthorne police using bloodhounds and going door to door in his neighborhood.

"I don't know what to say," the boy's mother told KCAL-TV in Los Angeles. "I just thank God that he's alive. I wasn't thinking he was going to go to the airport and go to Hawaii. How could they let my son get on a plane without money or a ticket?"

Self said the boy was released into the custody of an uncle who lives in Hawaii and that his mother was trying to make arrangements to travel there and bring him home.

A spokesman for the Hawthorne Police Department said detectives were trying still trying to figure out how the boy boarded the Hawaiian Airlines flight without a ticket.