Charges have been filed against a family member of a 10-year-old Delaware County boy who went missing over the weekend before being found safe at the relative’s Southwest Philadelphia home, according to police.
Brooke Metra is charged with obstructing custody of a child and escaping police custody.
Metra’s 10-year-old relative, who has a learning disability, went missing after leaving his grandmother’s home on Delmar Drive in Folcroft around 5:30 p.m. on Saturday. The grandmother is the boy’s legal guardian.
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“We were told that the grandmother was upstairs in the shower and the child was in the house playing on his computer and after that she came downstairs and he was missing,” Folcroft Police Chief Bill Blair said.
Folcroft police worked with the FBI and Pennsylvania State Police in their search for the boy.
“From past experience and stuff we started looking at all the river beds and water storage in the woods and that’s what we were worried about until later we found out that there was a vehicle that was stolen out of Delaware and possibly could be involved,” Chief Blair said. “We finally got the tag number of that vehicle and put a search out for it and the officers found it in Southwest Philadelphia.”
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Police said they later found the boy unharmed at Metra’s home in Southwest Philadelphia around 1:30 p.m. on Sunday.
Folcroft Police arrested Metra. At one point she escaped police custody before being apprehended again, according to investigators.
“She basically got out of the handcuffs on the wall and escaped out of the building and we had to go get her,” Folcroft Police Chief Bill Bair said.
After being brought back to the police station, she was taken to county prison.
Chief Blair told NBC10 it’s still unclear why Metra took the child. While she’s related to the boy, she hasn’t been involved with the family in recent years, according to investigators.
“We got a lot of information from the family members,” Chief Blair said. “We got a lot of information from people on Folcroft Police Crime Watch. There was a ton of help that was out there, of people who wanted to help.”
