NYPD releases rendering of missing Brooklyn child mom denies exists

NYPD detectives released a computer-generated image Friday of what they believe might look like an 11-year-old autistic boy from Brooklyn who has been missing for weeks, while the child’s mother continues to pretend her son never existed, officials said.

Police believe Jacob Pritchett went missing in mid-August, but authorities were not alerted to his disappearance until late September.

When they learned the child had not been seen at her Howard Avenue apartment in Brownsville, they went to the child’s mother, who bizarrely told cops and the city’s Department of Children’s Services that she never had a child.

There was no evidence that a child lived in the home when she allowed police to search the premises, even though building managers had a copy of Jacob’s birth certificate and neighbors had seen the child several times through the window.

A family court judge ordered the mother to be placed in a hospital, where she will undergo examinations and psychiatric treatment, while police continue to search for the boy.

Weeks later, the mother still does not acknowledge her son’s existence and at one point cited her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination as the reason for her refusal to cooperate, a law enforcement source with knowledge of the case said.

On Friday, cops released a computer-generated image of Jacob “to predict what (the missing child) would look like today.”

Cops were never able to locate a photo of Jacob and on October 4 released a composite sketch of what the child looks like.

“This is all we have at the moment,” a police spokesperson said at the time. “What we have, we spread.”

ACS began investigating Jacob’s disappearance after an informant contacted a state hotline with concerns about the child’s well-being, law enforcement sources told the Daily News.

Agency investigators visited the Brownsville apartment belonging to the child’s mother on Sept. 25, but were unable to gain access and called police. When NYPD officers arrived at the mother’s home, she allowed them into her apartment, but then denied being the child’s mother.

The mother was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

ACS officers returned to Pritchett’s apartment with police and investigators to search the building as well as nearby dumpsters – even recruiting NYPD K-9 police dogs to help in the hunt.

The K-9 dogs were hit by a refrigerator inside the apartment, as well as dumpsters in the back, cops said.

Residents reported smelling a foul odor coming from trash cans at the back of the building around the time Jacob disappeared, although trash from the building had been collected there for several weeks over the summer. But when cops learned of Jacob’s disappearance, the trash had already been picked up, authorities said.

Earlier this month, cops began digging at the High Acres Landfill in Parinton, N.Y., located about 14 miles east of Rochester and which serves as a dumping ground for trash hauled out of the apartment complex where Pritchett lived.

An exhaustive search by New York police and state police turned up nothing, a law enforcement source with knowledge of the case said.

“We are still treating this case as a missing person, so we are doing everything we can to release images of the boy in case he is seen,” the police source said.

Neighbors told officers they hadn’t seen the child in six to eight weeks, police said.

“We were relaxing outside and you would see the boy through the window,” said neighbor Evelyn Rolon, 49. “He had a little car that he played with. He never went out. He didn’t go to school.”

Rolon said she was shocked to learn the boy’s age, saying he looked younger in size.

“He was 11? He looked 7 or 8,” she said, adding of the missing child: “It’s horrible.”

Cops are asking anyone with information on Jacob’s whereabouts to call NYPD Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS. All calls will remain confidential.