A runaway teenage boy who reunited with his dog he had given up to an animal shelter while homeless captivated millions of people who watched the news. One of them was a woman who has identified herself as the teen’s mother.
The unidentified 17-year-old boy surrendered his dog Jada to a Mississippi animal shelter, saying he was living under a bridge and could not provide for her. The homeless boy said he had left Jada in a tent while he went to look for work, but she had escaped.
‘We’re a shelter, so we’re concerned about the dog,’ Kris Robinson, interim director of the Senatobia-Tate County Animal Shelter, told . ‘But ultimately we were concerned about him and him getting off the street and getting some help.’
The teen left Jada at the shelter, along with a bag of dog food.
‘He filled out a surrender form with a little bit of information about himself, and we were able to pass that along to some folks who could help him,’ Robinson said.
On Thursday of last week, Senatobia police announced that they had found the teen with the help of some community members. The boy was reunited with Jada at the animal shelter on Friday morning – in picture perfect moment that his alleged mother later saw on TV.
The woman contacted and said she had reported her son missing last summer in Senatobia, and last saw him a year ago.
‘I started crying,’ she said. ‘I wish he would come home. I want to see him. I’m not mad at him. I just want him in my house. I want him to be here with me.’
She added that he ran away from home after she grounded him for bad behavior.
‘He didn’t think he should have to be grounded for something he had done. He thought he was grown and he could do it on his own,’ she claimed. ‘The fact that he thought he had to run away breaks my heart.’
Authorities on Friday said the teen reunited with his pup had found a place to stay. They did not say why he was not taken to the woman who claims she has full custody of him.
‘I don’t care about the past. I just want my baby, and anybody should understand that when they lose a child and he’s still alive and he can come back at any time,’ she said. ‘But instead of bringing him back to me, they put him with some strangers.’
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