Found Deceased OH - Harley Dilly, 14, walking to Port Clinton High School, 20 Dec 2019 #5

[whatsnext]

I only wish that the small kid in the house could grow up in a more loving atmosphere than he has known so far. At least he's still alive. JMO

 

[scdiv]

Mother of Port Clinton teen Harley Dilly speaks out after he is found dead: He ‘made a choice’

"He isn’t a runaway, or abducted, kidnapped, or missing… he is found and dead!,” Heather continued in her post. “Today we had to go make arrangements at a funeral home for our son, our 14 year old. Who made a choice. He made the choice to climb the antenna of an abandoned home, walk across a roof, to a chimney and attempted to climb down.” -

MORE AT LINK
I've been sitting on my hands because something is just so off about all of this that I feel like anything I say is going to put me in time out but I had to share this link.

Odd that there is no focus or empathy for how Harley must have felt when he realized the desperation of his situation. My heart immediately thinks of what it must have been like for this scared, trapped boy. He's just a kid with what sounds like a chaotic home life who got a (bad) bright idea to do what he thought was some harmless fun or mischief. He had no idea of the situation he would find himself in or what it would turn into, no one would ever choose that. It just feels like blaming the victim for something that was just an extremely unfortunate, tragic accident/situation all the way around. Poor Harley.

 

[AgeofAquaruis]

Sounds like she is blaming the school for everything.

And stupid teenagers, being stupid teenagers, doing stupid teenagers stuff, like influencing Harley to sneak into a house. Maybe to have a party even, eh? Timing is everything.
MOO

 

[AgeofAquaruis]

I wish I could find the youtube video where he begged his mom not to break his glasses. If I do find it I will post, if someone else knows which one, (i watched it here) please share. I think Harley "tried" to take care of his glasses. JMO

Searching.

 

[K9Enzo]

I feel compassion for the mom. IMO, that post is a angry mama lashing out at the masses. I can only imagine the online chatter coming at her from perfect parents, with perfect children. Other moms especially, can be brutal, IMO.

I hope there is someone grounded in her life that can steady her. Dark days are ahead as she faces the reality her son is gone, forever.

 

[LarkBunting]

My oldest, my 14yo son, felt sick this morning, so I called him out of school & let him stay home. He wasn’t violently or seriously ill, just felt “a little sick” & likely run down from his long days of school & extracurricular activities. Okay, so he rests today & will be back at school next week, & can make up whatever he missed today. No big deal. (To be fair, I say this as a mom of kids who take school seriously & rarely miss a day. I’m not sure if Harley missed a lot of school or not?)

My son also has a smart phone with a tracking program on it. Even at 14, I always, ALWAYS, know where he is & who he’s with. If he was a handful of minutes late to anywhere, I would be calling/texting/tracking his location. To be honest, I would probably be on the phone to the police if he was slightly late & not responding to calls/texts & I couldn’t track him. I would be panicking.

Also, if he ever lost the privilege of his phone, it would only be taken away when he was home with me. He would still get to have it when he went to school or elsewhere. To me, it’s a safety tool & does a lot for my peace of mind. I would never leave him without a way of contacting help.

My heart hurts so much for Harley, just a 14yo boy, the same age as mine. I can’t imagine his fear & suffering. I can’t imagine him asphyxiating alone & panicking & thinking of — who? His mother? Siblings? Having no phone to even try to call for help. It wrecks my mother heart. I wish any of us could have been there that day to rescue him or call for help (if he was too stuck).

Rest in peace, Harley. I am so sorry the world couldn’t have offered you better.

 

[kaykay543]

And stupid teenagers, being stupid teenagers, doing stupid teenagers stuff, like influencing Harley to sneak into a house. Maybe to have a party even, eh? Timing is everything.
MOO

Is this something you are just making up? Or this really happened? People really need to put that they are posting their own theory or a fact.

Odd that there is no focus or empathy for how Harley must have felt when he realized the desperation of his situation. My heart immediately thinks of what it must have been like for this scared, trapped boy. He's just a kid with what sounds like a chaotic home life who got a (bad) bright idea to do what he thought was some harmless fun or mischief. He had no idea of the situation he would find himself in or what it would turn into, no one would ever choose that. It just feels like blaming the victim for something that was just an extremely unfortunate, tragic accident/situation all the way around. Poor Harley.

I am a bit taken aback by her statement. But I keep reminding myself she probably isn't in her right mind.

 

[heed101]

My oldest, my 14yo son, felt sick this morning, so I called him out of school & let him stay home. He wasn’t violently or seriously ill, just felt “a little sick” & likely run down from his long days of school & extracurricular activities. Okay, so he rests today & will be back at school next week, & can make up whatever he missed today. No big deal. (To be fair, I say this as a mom of kids who take school seriously & rarely miss a day. I’m not sure if Harley missed a lot of school or not?)

My son also has a smart phone with a tracking program on it. Even at 14, I always, ALWAYS, know where he is & who he’s with. If he was a handful of minutes late to anywhere, I would be calling/texting/tracking his location. To be honest, I would probably be on the phone to the police if he was slightly late & not responding to calls/texts & I couldn’t track him. I would be panicking.

Also, if he ever lost the privilege of his phone, it would only be taken away when he was home with me. He would still get to have it when he went to school or elsewhere. To me, it’s a safety tool & does a lot for my peace of mind. I would never leave him without a way of contacting help.

My heart hurts so much for Harley, just a 14yo boy, the same age as mine. I can’t imagine his fear & suffering. I can’t imagine him asphyxiating alone & panicking & thinking of — who? His mother? Siblings? Having no phone to even try to call for help. It wrecks my mother heart. I wish any of us could have been there that day to rescue him or call for help (if he was too stuck).

Rest in peace, Harley. I am so sorry the world couldn’t have offered you better.

Great post. I have also said this about the phone. They could have been able to track his location . My 14 year also goes everywhere with his phone and I track him.

 

[AgeofAquaruis]

Is this something you are just making up? Or this really happened? People really need to put that they are posting their own theory or a fact.



I am a bit taken aback by her statement. But I keep reminding myself she probably isn't in her right mind.

Hence MOO She's placing blame on Harley,and Fortnight, and others influencing him. It is curious that I posted a theory about how it might have happened, then shortly after that the FB post was made. Still wonder why she didn't check on the school call,and didn't report him missing for 41 hrs. And the talking to him, not seeing him,and what the difference is.
Again MOO.

 

[Lusitana]

She can't be nice to him, even when he's dead? Oof. She's worried about what people say and what people think. Everything is a big nuisance: "he's dead, and now I HAVE TO go make arrangements for his funeral". <modsnip> Poor kid.

 

[Dnp2be]

It is heartbreaking and nauseating enough to think about the utterly terrifying way this poor child spent the last moments of his life. The fear he must have felt, the panic and anxiety of not being able to breathe and to be trapped in such a small area with no way to free himself. The shear hopelessness that he felt until he was finally at peace. It brings tears to my eyes every time.

I totally get using these horrible outcomes to help us all become better in the future. To help us locate victims quicker and more efficiently. To develop new protocols and find ways to ensure terrible tragedy’s such as this do not continue. But I cringe reading some of the news articles, social media comments, and posters opinions on these threads. It’s not uncommon to want to find someone and something to blame. It’s not uncommon to experience denial in such situations. However, crucifying or blaming someone else does not bring Harley back nor does it do anything productive for fixing anything we believe to have went wrong in this case.

I do not envy LE’s job. I am grateful they are willing to spend so much of their life dedicated to helping others. I can only imagine how hard it is to discover the remains of a child. Again, I do not envy their job. They are human and make errors as we all do. We can talk about how they should have checked the house earlier until we are blue in the face. IMO, when autopsy results are completed, we will know whether or not they would have still been locating remains and not performing a rescue mission.

Sadly, Harley was not reported missing for quite some time after he was last seen or even last spoken to. However, I am not blaming the parents. I have spoken about my own struggles with a child whose behaviors are less than perfect on this thread. I know the pain and heartache and disappointment that you feel as a parent when everyone else wants to point the finger and tell you what you should have done. And rarely do they know that as parents, we have already tried what they believe to be the answers. Tried, albeit unsuccessfully. I am not however saying the parents are not in part to blame, but blaming isn’t going to make this all better at this point.

Pointing fingers, blaming, being cruel, name calling, etc. none of these things are productive nor do they help to create a feeling of unity that is needed to heal and develop strategies for better outcomes in the future. It is my opinion that no one person is to blame in any of this. It is a tragic culmination of SEVERAL mistakes by MULTIPLE people that I can’t even honestly say would have made the outcome different in the end. I can speculate but what good does that do?

I have no real answers here and I do understand how difficult it is to accept the outcome that has been presented to us. I am positive everyone is hurting because I know I am and I never even met Harley. The day he was found, I spoke to my children about this case and Discussed safety, the importance of communication, not running off, chimneys and all sorts of things that were going through my head at the time. I have to believe something good can come from something so tragic. Sorry for the long post.

imo

 

[michmi]

She can't be nice to him, even when he's dead? Oof. She's worried about what people say and what people think. Everything is a big nuisance: "he's dead, and now I HAVE TO go make arrangements for his funeral". <modsnip> Poor kid.

I totally agree. I know he might have been a handful, but I found Harley a delightful, intelligent child. I can’t imagine losing my son and publicly posting that he chose this.

 

[nyvictoria]

I was just checking to see if there was any news and saw that he was found dead. He must have been so frantic and scared out of his mind. I’m surprised LE never entered the house when they were searching for Harley. I hope he didn’t have friends with him who left him there knowing he was trapped. Sadly teens do dumb things all the time and this is a worst case result. What a shame.

 

[AgeofAquaruis]

I totally agree. I know he might have been a handful, but I found Harley a delightful, intelligent child. I can’t imagine losing my son and publicly posting that he chose this.

ITA Poor kid. It breaks my heart.

 

[kaykay543]

Hence MOO She's placing blame on Harley,and Fortnight, and others influencing him. It is curious that I posted a theory about how it might have happened, then shortly after that the FB post was made. Still wonder why she didn't check on the school call,and didn't report him missing for 41 hrs. And the talking to him, not seeing him,and what the difference is.
Again MOO.

So you think she read your post and that caused her to make a statement? This is just getting too far out there IMO.

webslueths is supposed to be victim friendly. she did not kill her son. she is not a suspect in any shape or form. She literally has the world raining down on her while shes burying her son.

 

[LostOldUserName]

Mother of Port Clinton teen Harley Dilly speaks out after he is found dead: He ‘made a choice’

"He isn’t a runaway, or abducted, kidnapped, or missing… he is found and dead!,” Heather continued in her post. “Today we had to go make arrangements at a funeral home for our son, our 14 year old. Who made a choice. He made the choice to climb the antenna of an abandoned home, walk across a roof, to a chimney and attempted to climb down.” -

MORE AT LINK
I've been sitting on my hands because something is just so off about all of this that I feel like anything I say is going to put me in time out but I had to share this link.

A little chuckle at the niece's name

 

[Stripehaven]

Bravo to this post!

I've had the unfortunate - and seemingly rare? - experience of both having imperfect kids AND being an imperfect parent. I've posted before about when my oldest (now 36) was a teen, & I knew that after repeated calls, LE can determine a child is "habitually disobedient" and pick him up. It's hard to explain what a mom goes through when her options are waiting in fear or calling the law on her beloved little boy. Both pose certain risks, and only in hindsight do you know if you made the right choice.

From experience, I can say that when you decide not to call LE for the time being (which is a choice I made more than once), you still panic the whole time. You may still go about your daily obligations, take care of your other kids, even eat dinner out - but that sick feeling in your stomach and that ache in your heart don't go away until your child is back in your sight. MOO.

I get what you’re saying, having had a similar kid, but in the case in an absence did you try to contact friends etc. in lieu of police? You don’t have to answer, obviously, but the idea of having NO idea where a 14-year-old is AND heading out for dinner seems really unusual to me. I don’t think the parents had anything to do with Harleys horrible death but I guess I am just a bit hung up on how he may have felt unloved and at sea.

it’s moot, I guess. It’s just hard to let go of.

 

[stephlovescheese]

Mother of Port Clinton teen Harley Dilly speaks out after he is found dead: He ‘made a choice’

"He isn’t a runaway, or abducted, kidnapped, or missing… he is found and dead!,” Heather continued in her post. “Today we had to go make arrangements at a funeral home for our son, our 14 year old. Who made a choice. He made the choice to climb the antenna of an abandoned home, walk across a roof, to a chimney and attempted to climb down.” -

MORE AT LINK
I've been sitting on my hands because something is just so off about all of this that I feel like anything I say is going to put me in time out but I had to share this link.

Holy crap- just catching up for the day.

 

[GeorgiaRai]

I get what you’re saying, having had a similar kid, but in the case in an absence did you try to contact friends etc. in lieu of police? You don’t have to answer, obviously, but the idea of having NO idea where a 14-year-old is AND heading out for dinner seems really unusual to me. I don’t think the parents had anything to do with Harleys horrible death but I guess I am just a bit hung up on how he may have felt unloved and at sea.

it’s moot, I guess. It’s just hard to let go of.

The first time it happened, yes - though we only had land lines then and I knew very few of his school friends, and none of their parents. My daughter was able to find out the next morning where he'd been. The other time, I knew he'd returned to the same place, even though I had no way to check on him. (There were 2 nights he didn't come home at all; other times, he'd leave for long walks, but return the same evening.) He wasn't a runaway, and he wasn't missing - it was this horrible in-between and I never knew if I was handling it right.

I don't know anything about the true dynamics of the Dilly family. I do know it's possible to be a loving, concerned parent and still experience some of the things Harley's parents are being vilified for. (Not by you, Stripehaven! I mean in general.)

 

[Stripehaven]

Mother of Port Clinton teen Harley Dilly speaks out after he is found dead: He ‘made a choice’

"He isn’t a runaway, or abducted, kidnapped, or missing… he is found and dead!,” Heather continued in her post. “Today we had to go make arrangements at a funeral home for our son, our 14 year old. Who made a choice. He made the choice to climb the antenna of an abandoned home, walk across a roof, to a chimney and attempted to climb down.” -

MORE AT LINK
I've been sitting on my hands because something is just so off about all of this that I feel like anything I say is going to put me in time out but I had to share this link.

Oh gosh. This makes me cringe. Maybe she is just coming to terms with it all and not expressing herself well, or without a filter. The defensiveness makes me so uncomfortable but I guess I can understand, given some of the posts against them that I’ve seen elsewhere online.