Nov
14
Remember how Dylan used to (uncomfortably) resemble JB’s brother? Uncle Joe has a baby of his own now, and I can’t really tell…do you think little Charlie looks like JB at all?
Nov
9
You’ve probably heard about Sky Metalwala, the 2-year-old boy who was reported missing in Bellevue, Washington on Sunday morning. This has been a very big local story (I live in Bellevue), and it just keeps getting weirder and sadder and I cannot stop thinking about it.
Sky’s mother, Julia Biryukova, told police her car ran out of gas while she was driving her ill son from their Redmond home to Bellevue’s Overlake hospital on Sunday morning. She said she took her 4-year-old daughter and walked to to a gas station about a mile away, leaving Sky sleeping in his car seat in the unlocked car. When she returned more than an hour later, she said Sky was gone.
Her story sounded bizarre from the start—who would leave a 2-year-old alone in a car? A sick 2-year-old, at that?—but oh, man, that was just the start of how fucked-up this whole thing is.
It turns out Sky’s parents have been embroiled in a bitter divorce/custody battle, culminating in 11 hours of mediation which granted Biryukova custody of the children. This compromise happened only four days before Sky’s disappearance. In the past, each of the parents has filed for protective orders against the other, and each has had custody of the two children at times.
Biryukova has been committed to three mental health facilities beginning in March 2010. A psych eval deemed her “not psychotic,” although her husband Solomon Metalwala said she was mentally ill and had dreams about killing the couple’s children. For her part, Biryukova has accused Metalwala of domestic violence, claiming he assaulted her in front of the children in December 2009.
The father took a polygraph test Monday night that came back inconclusive, the mother refuses to take one.
Police are saying they have talked to only one person, a neighbor of Biryukova’s, who reported seeing Sky in the past two weeks. No one else, aside from Biryukova and the four-year-old daughter, has come forward to say they saw Sky in that time.
And if all that isn’t upsetting enough, it turns out both parents were charged with reckless endangerment in 2009 after they left Sky in their car while they shopped at a Target store.
For an hour. On a 27-degree day. When he was three months old.
Their four-year-old daughter has been in protective custody by CPS since Sunday, and there have been no leads on Sky’s whereabouts.
Some stories are just so haunting you can’t get them out of your head. I remember when James Kim was lost in the woods and how it felt like the entire Pacific Northwest was hoping against hope that he would make it out alive.
I think we are all hoping the same for Sky. I hope this story, against all the odds, has a happy ending.
Age 2, 2’10” tall, 39 pounds, black hair, brown eyes. Sky was last seen on Nov. 6, 2011, in the 2600 block of 112th Ave. N.E., Bellevue. He was last seen wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt, black and aqua blue sweatpants and white socks. If you have any information, call 911.
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