An Oakland resident continues to keep the name of a missing 5-year-old boy alive nine years after he allegedly disappeared from a shoe shop on College Avenue.
"It’s been nine years. Standing at this door is really weird," said Sherri Lyn Miller who said she thinks about Hassani Campbell every day.
Campbell’s foster father Louis Ross said he took the boy’s baby sister with him to the front of Rockridge store to get Jennifer Campbell, the boy’s aunt, who worker there.
When he returned, he said the five-year-old with cerebral palsy and leg braces was gone.
"I can feel him here but I don’t believe he was here that day," said Miller.
On Aug. 10, 2009 Oakland police did an intensive search, even taking a dive team to Fremont to look for his body but found nothing.
"Nine years and we have no answers," Miller said.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children put together an age profession photo of Campbell, this year he would have turned 14.
"Anytime we’re not able to solve a case and bring closure to the family and find out what happened that’s always frustrating," said Johnna Watson from the Oakland Police Department.
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Detectives grew frustrated when they though the case was solved by arresting the foster parents on suspicion of murder but let them go when the district attorney decided there wasn’t enough evidence.
"The D.A. know he’s gone, the investigators know he’s gone," Miller said. "Somebody has to care, he was an innocent little boy he didn’t deserve what happened to him."
What happened to Campbell is still a mystery.
