The Boy Who Ran Away: In-Depth Look at Life and Death of Avonte Oquendo

The doctor told the mother not to worry, that the baby was only a little developmentally delayed. Some kids just do it on their own time, he said. So she brought him home and waited.

Vanessa Fontaine had the background, as a nurse and an experienced mother, to understand that something was different about Avonte. He was one year old and still not making eye contact. He’d started talking, saying “Mommy” and “Daddy,” but then just as suddenly he’d stopped saying anything at all. There were other symptoms, too. “He’d watch TV, but he wouldn’t play with toys,” she remembers. “He didn’t like any toy that I would buy him, no toy at all.”