Frustrated by a disturbance at school, a 14-year-old boy staggered towards a barn 15 years ago and disappeared into the night.
Nobody is aware of Blake Pursley’s fate to this day. However, his mother is hopeful that she will one day learn the truth about what transpired with her son.
It’s like a piece of me is gone, Zylpha Pursley said. “There’s just a void in my life that doesn’t go away; it’s not like I’m depressed.”
Investigators think that Blake, dissatisfied at the Cedu School, wandered off with the intention of returning home to Flagler, Colorado. His unique footprints were tracked to a paved road close to the special needs school, where they seem to have veered right, according to a tracker.
Turning left would have taken us into town. A right turn would have taken Blake to a rough cliff face behind the seventy-five-acre campus, from which he could see the lights of Highland twenty miles away.
Sheriff’s Sergeant Rick Whitehead, who initially responded to the call as a detective at the time, stated, “He never showed up again, there was no trail.” We were able to come up with nothing at all. It still frightens me.
Blake had multiple disabilities, and experts stated that without medical care, the boy would not have been able to survive.
Following a near-drowsing incident when he was three years old, Blake underwent multiple surgeries, including a tracheotomy, and his head, neck, abdomen, and chest were scarred. He was operating at the level of a nine-year-old, and his left leg was four inches shorter than his right.
Blake’s sister Kandi Seymour said, “We’ve never had closure.” “You don’t disappear from the face of the earth, but none of us are willing to say he’s dead.”
While the case was looked into as a runaway juvenile case by sheriff’s officials, Blake’s family is wondering if foul play was involved.
According to Seymour, fleeing “never seemed like the logical choice.” He was not too bright. He would have known, in my opinion, that there was nowhere to go.
The statement of a young school employee that he attempted to bring Blake back but the teen outran him is questioned by his family. Nearby lived a convicted child ki*ller who is currently serving a death sentence, according to a detective.
People who knew Blake or worked on his case expressed a desire for a search and rescue team to revisit the scene of his disappearance in order to potentially provide the boy’s family with closure.
Blake’s family provided DNA samples to the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children so they could identify him in the event that his remains were ever discovered.
They have maintained contact with Pursley and have taken multiple pictures of Blake as he has aged.
“We stay involved in the cases until a recovery has occurred,” NCMEC supervisor Jerry Nance stated. “We’ll keep searching as long as he is missing.”
There are other boys at Cedu School besides Blake who vanished and were never seen again. There are two more, at least: Daniel Yuen in 2004 and John Inman in 1993.
In 2005, the school declared bankruptcy and closed, partly due to the volume of lawsuits brought against them.
About six times a week, according to sheriff’s officials, the school was called to handle runaways and allegations of criminal activity.
