Brooklyn boy murdered on his way home from camp

Leiby Kletzky, a Hassidic boy from Brooklyn, was to celebrate his ninth birthday next week. He felt old enough to ask his parents if he could walk part of the way home from day camp. After practicing a dry run and memorizing the route together, Leiby’s parents agreed to his request, planning to meet at a spot 200 meters from the family home. Yet it seems that on his first walk home by himself, Leiby lost his way and vanished.

After three days of intensive searches, Leiby Kletzky’s remains were found Wednesday at the home of Levi Aron, a 35 year-old Haredi Jew. Additional remains were found in a trash bin 4 kilometers from Aron's home. The turning point in the community-wide search came when security camera footage was discovered showing Leiby walking alongside a suspicious looking older man. The footage caught Leiby standing near 44th Street and 12th Avenue in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn just before 5 p.m. The boy had been walking home from day camp and was supposed to meet his mother three blocks away, but never showed up. The video shows Leiby speaking to a man in a car, although it does not show him entering the car.

Additional surveillance footage shows the suspect Levi Aron entering a dental clinic on Monday to pay a bill, allowing authorities to establish the suspect’s name and address. Aron has no criminal record. Once police arrived at the suspect's home, in the same neighborhood as the Kletzky family’s, they asked him if he knew where Leiby was. Aron reportedly pointed in the direction of the kitchen.

New York police entered the kitchen and found a blood-stained fridge as well as blood-stained cutting-boards and knives. In the freezer police found the 8 year-old boy’s severed feet. Aron then led police to the rest of Leiby's remains, which had been placed in a red suitcase and thrown into a dumpster. Aron told investigators that he had panicked and killed Leiby after realizing the extent of the search for the boy, and seeing his picture on television. In a special press conference organized in response to the horrific murder, New York police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly said, "is seems the attack on Leiby was happenstance and a terrible fate for this young boy."

The shocked Kletzky family remained in their home all of Wednesday, waiting for police to complete their investigations and release Leiby's body.

"We are in total shock,” the Kletzkys’ Congressional representative Dov Hikind told Israel Hayom on Wednesday. “During the last few days thousands of people have participated in the search for Leiby, and not just members of the Jewish community. It was acollective effort that ended in tragedy. Leiby was a good child, friendly and kind. This is a safe neighborhood. A child is on his way to meet his mother and does not return home. No one understands how this happened."

Representative Hikind added that to his knowledge the Kletzky family is not acquainted with the suspect. Hikind said he was taken aback when he himself viewed a photo of the suspect. "Suddenly he does look familiar to me," said Hikind, "What causes a person to do such a thing? Sadly the meaning of this is that it can happen to anyone, anywhere. I have already called my daughter today, a mother of five, just to tell her to keep her kids safe. What horror."

The body of Leiby Kletzky was laid to rest Thursday at a funeral attended by an estimated 8,000 people. The New York Times reports that the service was held entirely in Yiddish, and that a eulogy was delivered by the boy’s father saying that he was lucky to have had Leiby, if only for nine years. “Thank God we had him,” his father said.

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