Semaj is no stranger to car theft, Guttu said. In December, Tacoma police said they caught him after he crashed a stolen car. More recently, he took a car, drove to Seattle, then was taken into custody after he ran out of gas, said Sakinah Booker.
She believes he learned how to drive from playing video games on a PlayStation.
“He’s basically out of a booster seat,” Guttu said, adding that a police report listed Semaj as 4 feet 9 inches tall and all of 80 pounds.
Earlier, Sakinah Booker told police that she needed help with her son, and when they found him, they should take him to Remann Hall juvenile jail in Tacoma.
“I told (the officer), don’t bring him back home. … It’s too much,” she said.
After taking him to be checked for injuries at Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital and Health Center in Tacoma, Semaj was brought to Remann Hall, Guttu said. Officials declined to detain him because he didn’t score high enough on the facility’s risk assessment test and because of his age, said Shelly Maluo, juvenile court administrator.
“Putting a 9-year-old in our facility with our population is not a good thing,” she said.
Police then took him to a Child Protective Services facility, where he was turned away again because of his age, Guttu said.
About 11 p.m. Sunday night, Sakinah Booker took her son back. By 6 a.m. Monday, she had reported him missing again, she said. Police listed him as missing, and received a call Tuesday from a juvenile facility in San Antonio saying, “We’ve got your runaway,” Guttu said.
Officials took Semaj into custody Tuesday as he stepped off the flight from Phoenix, but Guttu said he’s not sure how they figured out what was going on. A call to San Antonio police Tuesday was not returned.
After giving officials a false name – a tactic his mother said he used on police in the Seattle and Tacoma car incidents – Semaj eventually told them his real name, Guttu said.
Fred Wist, Pierce County deputy prosecutor in charge of the juvenile unit, said he was reviewing the police reports Tuesday afternoon from the police pursuit. “It is very seldom that we see kids this young,” he said.
Sakinah Booker said she hadn’t spoken with her son since he’d reached Texas, but that she’d been told he ended up in San Antonio instead of Dallas because he boarded the wrong plane in Phoenix. She said she had hoped to soon move her four sons back to Dallas, but Semaj grew tired of waiting. She’d also said she considered sending him to live with her sister in Illinois.
When asked how he might have gotten a seat on two flights, she said, “Your guess is as good as mine. I think they just let him on.”
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/6326838p-5515246c.html
What a bitch. How about moving your son away from the pedophile you lazy creep!