She is speaking out about her experience...
After their teen was linked to a ring of Kia and Hyundai car thefts in Columbus, OH, the parents of juvenile want to help keep kids from causing the recent crime spike. Their 14-year-old son had been stealing the cars over the summer, and his mom is very apologetic. She found the tools for the theft in his bedrooms and is speaking out against the theft ring, originated from the ‘Kia Boyz’ trend, we reported about here.
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“He's definitely out here stealing cars and getting into trouble, we don’t raise him to be like that, we don’t accept his behavior,” Trish said as she talked about her 14-year-old son. “I am sorry,” she said. “I definitely feel your pain, we’re trying to get it stopped.”
Unfortunately, unlike Trish and Michael’s son, some don’t make it out alive. Jayvon Reed, another 14-year-old boy was another Kia Boyz affiliate who was killed in a Stolen Hyundai. “Do not try to follow no trend, do not try to be a Kia boy,” Reed's sister Jay’aonia Armstrong said.
“As soon as they are caught, they are being released back home because there is nowhere to go,” Trish said. "We’ve asked for help, we are not getting any, help at all. My son has tried to take himself to the behavioral center, he begged to go there, and they turned him away because he was not suicidal.”
“We are doing enough, it’s the justice system that’s not working with us,” Trish said. "I called the cops on my son, they let him run out of the house.”
“Let him get the help he needs,” Michael said. "If he needs to go to jail until he is 21 for all this, that’s what he has to do.”
“One of the things we are working on is getting these parents organized,” Columbus Police Commander Duane Mabry said. "I expect soon we will get ourselves in a room with ourselves, parents, the prosecutors, and judges so we can put some faces and names together."