Baltimore boys found in raids

BOSTON — Police made disturbing discoveries when they raided two homes last week in central Massachusetts: Young teenage boys told investigators they had been brought there from their native Baltimore and forced to sell crack cocaine.

On Thursday, a 15-year-old boy was among five persons arrested in a Gardner drug raid, and that led to both an Amber Alert search for the boy’s younger sister, and a second raid, this time in Athol, where a 14-year-old boy was arrested.

Police think the two homes were being used by suspects in the same drug ring.

“And the two boys were forced to be part of it,” Denise Monteiro, spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Department of Social Services, which has taken custody of the boys, said yesterday.

Investigators don’t know if the children’s involvement was an isolated case or a widespread practice, a pipeline for a larger operation, Gardner police Lt. Gerald Poirier said.

“It’s a very disturbing thing,” he said.

Police issued an Amber Alert after the 15-year-old boy said his 12-year-old sister was missing after she accompanied him from Baltimore. The girl was found safe in Baltimore on Friday. Lt. Poirier said the girl apparently was dropped off at a bus station and left to find her way home alone after the Amber Alert was issued.

The boys “have been pretty traumatized after what they’ve been through. It’s unimaginable,” Miss Monteiro said.

The episode started in Maryland last week, when the father of the 15-year-old boy and 12-year-old girl was beaten over a drug debt.

The same persons involved in the man’s beating also took his children, telling them they were going on a vacation in New York, Lt. Poirier said. Instead, they ended up at a home in Gardner where police said drugs were being sold.

Police said the 15-year-old boy had cocaine in his possession when they raided the home Thursday and arrested four other persons on drug charges.

In the Amber Alert they issued, police said the girl might have been with Willie Smith, 17, of Baltimore and traveling in a green 1995 Ford minivan with a New York license plate.

After the alert went out, Gardner police received a phone call from a state police investigator who had seen the same minivan outside a house in Athol. That house, which already was under surveillance, is where police found the 14-year-old boy with drugs in his possession. Three more suspects were arrested there.

The two boys were taken into state custody after they appeared in juvenile court to face drug charges. Miss Monteiro said there were no immediate plans for the Massachusetts agency to send the boys back to Maryland.

“We’re not going to throw them in the arms of any other agency until we know what the plan is for them,” she said. “We obviously want to get them home, but we need to make sure they have a safe place for them.”

The 12-year-old girl is in the custody of the Baltimore Department of Social Services, department spokeswoman Sue Fitzsimmons said. Tomorrow, she added, the department will ask a judge to decide whether the girl should remain in the city’s care.

As of yesterday, the Smith youth’s whereabouts remained a mystery. He had been arrested in Gardner on an unrelated drug charge about a week before the raid. He is now wanted on a warrant charging him with violating the conditions of his release.

“I doubt very much he is still in Massachusetts,” Lt. Poirier said.

Lt. Poirier said the 12-year-old girl wasn’t cooperating with Baltimore police, so kidnapping charges aren’t likely.