COCONUT CREEK, Fla. – Officer Sean Feisthammel is training the Coconut Creek Police Department’s new recruit.
The Jimmy Ryce Center donated a bloodhound man tracker to the department and a group of elementary school students recently named him “Liberty.”
“It’s a very patriotic name and with her birthday being September 11, it worked out perfectly for us,” Feisthammel said about the “amazing puppy.”
The center donates the trackers in memory of nine-year-old Samuel “Jimmy” Ryce. A sexual predator abducted him on Sept. 11, 1995, after stepping out of his school bus in Miami-Dade County’s Redlands.
The search lasted three months. Police officers later learned he had been about a mile away from his home while the predator tortured him, and later shot him when he tried to escape.
The center has donated about 18,000 bloodhounds to police departments around the country.
“This is what we love doing in the memory of Jimmy Ryce and his parents and his sister,” said Terri Lynn, the managing director of the Jimmy Ryce Center.
Jimmy’s sister Martha Ryce, who dedicated her life to advocating for missing children, died by suicide on Dec. 30, 2012, in Atlanta, Georgia. She was 35.
The center also runs an education campaign in his memory. The tips for children: “Be alert to surroundings, don’t get within grabbing distance of a stopped car, run to the nearest safe place, scream to attract help and scare the predator away, and fight to break free.”