SOUTHWEST MIAMI-DADE – A witness who possibly saw the first alleged attempt by Patricia Ripley to leave her son, Alejandro, to drown said he didn’t think anything was unusual when he saw the two at the canal behind the Kendall Acres Condominiums at 103rd Avenue and Kendall Drive.
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Patricia Ripley, left, faces murder charges in the death of her 9-year-old son, Alejandro |
Then an older man
pulled the boy out of the water. “They just dried him off
and they walked away. The older couple went into the hallway
and she walked to the south with him,” the witness recalled.
Police said Ripley admitted to driving to another pond-like
canal about six miles away at the Miccosukee Gold and County
Club around 8:30 p.m. Thursday night, where she led him into
the water to drown.
The incident sparked a search and an Amber Alert Thursday
night when Ripley first called police to say that the boy
had been abducted after she was said two men ambushed her.
Ripley told police that a blue, four-door sedan sideswiped
her car, causing her to crash at Southwest 158th Avenue and
Southwest 88th Street. Then, she said, the driver of the
sedan got out of the car, armed with a knife and demanded
drugs from her before snatching her mobile phone, a computer
tablet and Alejandro.
Detectives interviewed the mother well into the evening
Thursday and into Friday morning, when the boy’s body was
found at 7:50 a.m.
They said she supplied conflicting statements during those
interviews. They also became suspicious when they saw
surveillance video from a Home Depot. That’s when they say
Ripley waited in her parked car for more than 15 minutes
before she called police about the abduction. Other
surveillance video showed video of a woman who police
believe is Ripley pushing the boy into the canal near the
Kendall Acres Condominium complex around 7:30 p.m. Thursday
night.
The witness said what he saw Thursday night was an
opportunity for Patricia Ripley to make a better choice.
“That was the sad part is, she tried it and it didn’t work,
so maybe that’s time to collect yourself and go on a
different path.”
Many questions still remain about what led up to the
incident. On Saturday, a judge in Miami allowed no bond in
her case. She is charged with one count of murder in the
first degree and one count of pre-meditated attempted murder
in the first degree. She remains jailed at the Turner
Guilford Knight Correction Center in Miami.
“He is going to be in a better place,” Patricia Ridley said
during her confession, according to detectives.