Every mother's worst nightmare
Reliving the fear that she'd never see tot
Guyana Chronicle
November 11, 2003
QUEENS, NY (Daily News) -- Judith Alveranga sat in her Queens living room Sunday cuddling and kissing the 2-year-old son she feared she would never see again.
"I don't want to leave him," said the 27-year-old Jamaica mom, as she held her son Deniro Rhumble. "I want to be with him every minute and make sure he's safe."
Deniro playfully clung to his mother as she recounted the 10-hour ordeal that began Saturday afternoon in Queens when the boy was abducted by a car thief and ended happily early Sunday when he was found by police in Long Island.
"It was the greatest news I could have gotten," Alveranga said, after the massive Amber Alert hunt led cops to a parking lot in Hempstead where Deniro was found sleeping safely in his car seat.
Yesterday, Alveranga heaped praise on the police who found her boy - and said she is confident they will find the carjacker-turned-kidnapper who nearly brought every parent's worst nightmare to life.
"You see someone drive away with your 2-year-old," she said, pausing to compose herself, "the only thing that happens is your knees crumble."
Alveranga had left Deniro in her unlocked 1996 Nissan Maxima with the engine running as she and a friend hopped out to pick up an order from a restaurant on Merrick Blvd. Saturday afternoon.
Alveranga had barely been inside for a minute, she said, when a heavyset man dashed into the car and drove off with Deniro, who was still strapped to his car seat in the back.
"I felt like an idiot," she said. "It happened so fast and I couldn't do anything. You can't chase down a speeding car."
After frantically calling 911 from her friend's cell phone, Alveranga spent the next 10 hours in a haze of fear and uncertainty, with only morsels of comfort coming from investigators who vowed to find her precious son.