Police Give New Details on Boy's Note Asking for Help

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Police in a Detroit suburb said Tuesday that the note a young boy left in a restaurant asking for help is most likely a hoax,

The note left by the boy in a Berkley restaurant read, “I’m with some people. Please help me,” according to reports on WDIV-TV, WXYZ-TV and the Detroit Free Press.

Shareen Naamou, a waitress at Alex’s, the restaurant at 2685 Twelve Mile Road where the boy left the note, said she didn’t notice anything strange about the party of five in a corner booth about 1:40 p.m. Monday.

The group included a white woman around 60 with a white baby and a black woman around 40 with three black children who appeared to b 8, 4 and 2, witnesses said.

“They seemed pretty normal. Average. Nothing out of the ordinary,” Naamou said.

Naamou said she saw the boy “kind of looking over his shoulder to see if anyone was watching him” as he wrote the note on a napkin. Surveillance video showed the boy grabbing a pen near the cash register and writing the note, while he glanced at the booth where he had been sitting.

Berkley police said the note was suspicious enough to follow up on it, but on Tuesday were confident it was a prank.

“We got a call from the mother, who admitted it was her son,” Berkley Police Lt. Mike Crum said. “Investigators are at the home now. We believe it’s a game he plays with his friends and didn’t realize the severity” of the situation.

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