The body of a Virginia Beach boy reported missing last week was pulled from a pond Monday, three days after his parents got a ransom demand that may have been just a twisted money grab.
Juan Sebastian Mejia Acevedo, 12, was found dead in the local pond Monday afternoon, after his parents called police Friday night and said the boy never came home from a friend’s house, according to CBS 6 Richmond.
Cops investigated the case as a possible abduction after the parents got a ransom message during a Facebook Live plea they made that night, and the state police issued an AMBER alert around 7 a.m. the next day.
The family said it paid the $500 demand but never heard back from the alleged kidnappers, Virginia Beach Police Chief Paul Neudigate said.
It is possible that the ransom request was a fraud, the chief said — an attempt by unscrupulous actors to take advantage of a family during their darkest hour.
“This would not be the first time that that type of scam has been perpetuated on a family that is going through difficult circumstances,” the chief said. “Is that a possibility? It absolutely is.
“Unfortunately, because it involved out-of-state transactions, we need search warrants, subpoenas, to try to identify who that individual was who received that money,” the chief said.
On Monday afternoon, authorities found Acevedo’s corpse in a pond near the Cambria at Cornerstone apartments off South Independence Boulevard — not far from the Mica Avenue address where his parents last saw him, the outlet said.
It’s too soon to tell if police will open a homicide investigation or rule the death accidental, authorities said.
“It’s too early for me to speculate,” Neudigate said. “We just recovered him. As we get more information and we can confirm facts — and not what we believe occurred — we will get that out to the community.”
“We had no specific indication that these ponds were an area of interest, but we did not want to leave any stone unturned.”
The boy’s body was sent to the medical examiner to determine a cause of death.
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