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E-mail StoryCalifornian exclusive: Boy who told kidnapping tale having 'horrible dreams'
Mother explains 9-year-old's suffering after friend's death
| Friday, Mar 21 2008 11:16 PM
Last Updated: Friday, Mar 21 2008 11:16 PM
The lie about the kidnapping was better in the mind of the 9-year-old boy who told it because “a bad man would be better than Zane doing this,” the mother of that boy said Friday.
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In an exclusive interview with The Californian, the mother of the boy who told the kidnapping lie explained in heart-wrenching detail how she and her son have suffered since Wednesday when her son’s 9-year-old friend, Zane Anthony Newton, was smothered to death inside a sump hole that collapsed around him.
The nightmare included one of her own relatives calling her son “a child killer and a liar,” she said.
Initially, the boy thought it would be better if a bad man was responsible rather than he and Zane for playing where they were warned by Zane’s parents to stay away from, the mother said.
The friend saw the cave-in, later telling police, “The dirt swallowed him up,” his mother said.
The boy tried to dig Zane out, but there were big boulders and he gave up after 30 seconds, his mother said. “He knew Zane was dead,” she said.
He grabbed Zane’s sweatshirt and took it to his home.
He told the story about a man in a black car with a white driver’s door shooting Zane in the shoulder and abducting him because that was the scariest story he could think of, his mother said.
His mother believed every word of the boy’s story when she first heard it Wednesday morning “because he doesn’t lie like that,” she said.
She added, “He’s a normal kid. He would lie if he was doing something he wasn’t supposed to do, but you could always tell.”
During those first few hours, she and her son were with Zane’s parents, Mark and Cindy Newton.
“We were just sick with worry. We didn’t know (if) he (Zane) had been molested or hurt. We felt so helpless.”
The mother said when she first saw her son the next morning, he “was as white as a sheet. He looked like he was going to vomit.”
The two boys had known each other for only a few months “but they hit it off and had been hooked at the hip ever since,” the mother said. On Tuesday afternoon, “Zane asked (my son) to spend the night” and that was perfect because she and her husband were busy moving from an apartment to a house.
The boys were playing with a football that went into the sump and Zane went in after it, the boy said in a later version to police and his mother. The hole collapsed as Zane hit his head on the top as he was coming out, the mother said, relating her son’s story.
She was cleaning her apartment that morning when a police car stopped and an officer told her she had to come with him. “Oh, my God,” she said. “What is wrong?”
The officer told her that her son was OK but Zane was not.
She went over to the Newtons’ house on Half Dome Way and later asked a relative to take her son.
She put a sweatshirt over his head, but television cameras caught his face and showed him on the 10 p.m. Channel 58 news and the 11 p.m. Channel 29 news. The station later apologized, she said.
In the afternoon, the boy was called to the police station to do a sketch, but an officer told him it was time to tell the truth. That’s when her son first said Zane fell in the hole where police later found him, the mother said.
The mother went to the police station and as they were leaving a relative called her son “a child killer and a liar.”
She wanted to go back to the Newtons’ but the police wouldn’t allow it. The police did offer their chaplain and he advised that her son would need counseling.
The mother said she would absolutely get counseling for her son, both at his school and elsewhere.
“He’s having horrible dreams,” she said. “He reaches out in the middle of the night like he’s digging. Sometimes he’s like a zombie staring in space, or he’s crying.”
The only person that has made him feel better was Zane’s 14-year-old sister, Selinah, who played games with him Thursday. “He felt safe knowing that she didn’t hate him,” the mother said.
It wasn’t until Thursday night that she got back together with the Newtons. Both her family and the Newtons wrongly thought the other family didn’t want to see them.
They realized how much they needed each other. Mrs. Newton told The Californian on Friday that she feels bonded for life now with the other mother and her son.
Mrs. Newton said she always wants Zane’s friend to be able to talk with her.
The other boy’s mother said, “I wouldn’t be able to survive this without her.”
The two mothers talked about the autopsy Thursday night and how it showed that even if the boy had told the truth from the beginning, it would have been too late to save Zane. He would have been dead within a few minutes of swallowing the dirt, the coroner’s staff said.
Some of the media found out where the family’s apartment was and “camped out there for two days,” the mother said. She has gotten little sleep as they stayed at a safe place.
On Friday night, the other mother and her son were going to stand by the Newtons at a candlelight vigil for Zane. “We’re going to pray for Zane,” the mother said.
Her son wants to go and the Newtons want them to go, she said.
“The family has opened their arms to my son,” she said.