Police release father’s 911 call reporting son missing
John Starks/Daily Herald via AP
Andrew Freund Sr., the father of the missing 5-year-old Andrew “AJ” Freund, walks near his home on Dole Avenue in Crystal Lake, Ill. on Friday, April 19, 2019 as members of the media try to speak with him. Police are investigating the boy’s disappearance and are focusing their attention on the boy’s home.
A father frantically hunted in his house, garage and the surrounding neighborhood in suburban Chicago, looking for his 5-year-old son who was not home when he returned after a doctor’s appointment, according to a recording of a 911 call released Tuesday.
In the 911 call last Thursday morning, Andrew Freund Sr. said his son, Andrew “AJ” Freund, was missing from his home in Crystal Lake
“We’ve checked closets, the basement, the garage, everywhere,” Freund told the dispatcher, adding that he had scoured the park, a nearby school and a “local gas station down here where we sometimes take him to buy treats.” But that there was no sign of the boy.
Andrew “AJ” Freund
Police were still searching for AJ in a park in the heavily wooded Chicago suburb Tuesday. The said they planned to use sonar to search local ponds, and that an Illinois State Police plane would search the area to guide officers searching the ground in the community about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northwest of Chicago.
The department also said detectives were asking neighbors to hand over home surveillance video in the hopes that they might provide clues about the boy’s location.
The department did not say anything about the boy’s mother, JoAnn Cunningham, who they have said is refusing to cooperate with detectives. Nor has it said anything further about the detectives’ belief that the boy was not abducted, had not wandered or that its focus had changed since Monday when it said the investigation was ‘focusing on the residence and the individuals that may have seen or had contact with AJ last.”
According to media reports, Cunningham was scheduled to appear in court Tuesday hoping to regain custody of her younger son who was taken into Illinois Department of Children and Family Services custody after his older brother disappeared.
The Northwest Herald reported Tuesday that the day the boy disappeared, Cunningham was arrested on an outstanding traffic warrant just after she and Andrew Freund Sr. went to Crystal Park Police Department to speak with investigators about their son. The paper said she was also scheduled to appear in court on Tuesday on the traffic case.
