A 15-month-old Boyle Heights boy who was reported missing in an Amber Alert last week, when he was allegedly abducted by his father, was safely found in Mexico, LA Police Department officials said on Sunday.
Noe Reyna reportedly first went missing on Nov. 14 and LAPD officials previously said that they believed the toddler was with his father, 35-year-old Carlos “Ivan” Reyna, in Mexico.
On Sunday, police confirmed that the boy was located by officials from the Department of Homeland Security in Mexico and said he was safely found.
The boy’s uncle was given instructions by authorities to bring him back into the U.S., LAPD Capt. Ruby Flores said during a news conference.
She also mentioned that the young boy seemed “well taken care of” and his mother will soon be interviewed by the L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services, (DCFS).
Meanwhile, the father is expected to faces charges, which the LAPD will recommend to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, Flores said. However, she also said she was not aware of any charges currently being brought against the boy’s mother.
The search was launched after officials from DCFS failed to pick up the toddler at his family’s residence in the 2200 block of East Fourth Street, officials previously said.
“DCFS was at the residence to take the child away due to narcotics issues,” Detective Steven Juarez said at the time. “At this point, the mother is very cooperative; however, she cannot help us in locating the father.”
Later, police found out that Noe was likely with his father in Mexico, and Detective Liliana Preciado said the LAPD was working to get the toddler back to his home in the U.S.
“We believe that he has reached out to his family, and we want to put the word out to see if he can please come back to the United States and bring back Noe,” Preciado said.
YouTube Cans The Weird And Creepy Kid Channel ‘Toy Freaks’
YouTube has put an end to the massive channel Toy Freaks in what appears to be a purge of questionable content which has been targeted at kids.
With more than 8.5 million subscribers, Toy Freaks was one of the largest channels to produce content for children, though many parents were concerned with the weird, often creepy, and potentially abusive videos.
The channel featured a father, who was referred to as “Freak Daddy” and his two daughters, Victoria and Annabelle. Even though the channel has been terminated, a quick search on YouTube will still show a number of their videos existing on other channels, like the one below.
A spokesperson for YouTube put forward the following statement:
“We take child safety extremely seriously and have clear policies against child endangerment. We recently tightened the enforcement of these policies to tackle content featuring minors where we receive signals that cause concern. It’s not always clear that the uploader of the content intends to break our rules, but we may still remove their videos to help protect viewers, uploaders and children. We’ve terminated the Toy Freaks channel for violation of our policies. We will be conducting a broader review of associated content in conjunction with expert Trusted Flaggers.”
Many of their videos featured the girls in possibly abusive situations, prompting concerned parents and popular YouTubers to complain, and call for a shutdown of the channel.
While criticism of Toy Freaks has existed for years, recent media coverage of this channel and others like it has brought more attention to the videos.
“This … father puts his young daughters under extreme pressure, pain, stress and anxiety and films them. He is profiting off of his children’s pain and suffering. If this isn’t abuse, I don’t know what is,” one Redditor wrote on the YouTube subbredit.
In the same post, the Redditor describes a specific video, which bothered them.
“One of their latest videos sees the father follow his little girl into the bathroom and film her as she’s crying in severe pain, blood flowing from her mouth and her tooth falling out,” they wrote.
The channel also made famous the “bad baby” trope, which often featured one of the children on the channel misbehaving.
“Toddler is never so uncontrollable as she is after watching one of those stupid fucking bad baby videos,” an annoyed parent wrote about the trope.
While Toy Freaks was very popular, it was also a money-making machine that benefitted heavily from YouTube’s algorithm.
According to the third-party analytics site Social Blade, the channel raked in an estimated $838,300 to $13.4 million per year. While that estimate is vast, even the low end of that scale shows that some serious money was being made.
Not too long ago, we reported that creepy, weird, and often violent videos were slipping through YouTube’s filters, often landing on its YouTube Kids app.
YouTube then announced a new policy change last week, which age restricts flagged content on its main app, which will automatically block it from getting filtered into the Kids App.
The Toy Freaks channel appears to be just another step in a larger push from YouTube to reign in its content put out there for children.