Shane Walker Disappeared from a Playground in New York

1-year-old Shane Anthony Walker was last seen at the Martin Luther King Jr. Towers playground located at 113th Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem in the New York borough of Manhattan on August 10, 1989. He was accompanied by his mother, Rosa Glover.

While she was sitting on a bench, a 10-year-old girl and her 5-year-old brother asked for permission to play with Shane. They said they didn’t mind that he was very young. She said they could play.

While Shane and the two children were playing on the slide, an African-American man approached Glover and began a conversation with her. He spoke about crime and mentioned kidnapping, saying “things happen to children,” and pointed to scars on himself which he said were from fighting. Glover became distracted while speaking to the man, and when she turned back to look for Shane, he was gone and so were the children he had been playing with.

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The two children re-entered the park through a hole in the fence a short time later. They told Shane’s mother they’d left him in the park. Glover immediately took the children to the police station to report her son missing. The police questioned the children extensively, and also interviewed the man who spoke to Shane’s mother. They couldn’t find any evidence that the children, their parents, or the man who talked to Glover were involved in his case.

They looked into the possibility that Shane was taken by a member of his own family, but concluded he had probably been abducted by a non-relative. He has never been heard from again. Police stated they were seeking an unidentified man for questioning; he is described as African-American, 19 to 24 years old, 5’8 tall, wearing a yellow shirt and acid-washed jeans.

Shane’s case shares striking similarities with the disappearance of Christopher Dansby. Christopher disappeared from the same area of the same playground in May 1989, three months before Shane did. Both boys were African-American toddlers and lived in the same apartment building. Both disappeared on the same day of the week (Thursday) at roughly the same time of day (Shane at 5:00 p.m. and Christopher at 7:00 p.m.)

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In addition, just before his disappearance, Christopher was playing the same two children who were with Shane when he was last seen. Police still aren’t sure whether the cases are related, however.

Authorities investigated the possibility that the boys’ cases were connected to a black market baby-ring operation and that the infant Andre Bryant. He was abducted from Brooklyn in March 1989 and was possibly another victim. All of the children are African-American.

Shane’s parents both still live in the same neighborhood he disappeared from. His mother hopes he is still alive and will return to her.

His case remains unsolved.

Investigating Agency: New York Police Department 646-610-6914 and New York Housing Police Department 212-410-8500.