Police Say Ex-Boyfriend Took Woman’s Son
TAMPA — After almost 42 agonizing hours hoping her missing 3-year-old son would return home safely, Sylvia Hopkins got her wish Monday afternoon as Tampa police engineered a surprise mother-and-child reunion.
“I am so glad to see you,” she said as she squeezed her son, Malachi, when police brought him into the lobby at police headquarters to finally see his anxious mother. Her eyes welled up with tears.
Police had asked her to come in for a polygraph test, she said. She had no idea that her son had been found after he went missing on New Year’s Eve.
“This has been hell,” she said.
The drama began about 8:30 New Year’s Eve, when Hopkins’ former live-in boyfriend, William Holland II, stopped by her Robles Park Village apartment. Hopkins said she was cooking up a traditional Southern New Year’s meal of black-eyed peas, barbecued ribs and mashed potatoes when Holland, 27, said he wanted to go to the store.
Hopkins said her son, who she calls Malley, wanted to go with Holland, who is not the boy’s father.
“Malley hugged him tightly,” she said. Holland told Hopkins that “he was just going to a store on Fletcher or Fowler.”
She let Malachi go with Holland. The boy was wearing a T-shirt and diaper.
“I am too trusting,” she said Monday morning while standing outside her apartment hours before her child was found.
Briana, Hopkins’ 7-year-old daughter, wanted to go, too, Hopkins said. “I wouldn’t let her. I wanted someone to share the meal with.”
By 10 p.m., Hopkins said, she started getting worried. About midnight, she called police. Hopkins said police arrived quickly.
Police spokesman Joe Durkin said that although there was no indication Holland would hurt the child — thus no Amber alert was issued — there was a feeling of urgency.
Holland has a history of narcotics arrests in Baltimore, he said. Also, Malachi has asthma and other lung problems and uses an inhaler. There is a machine in the apartment to help him breathe. He also has difficulty speaking. Hopkins and the police were worried that Malachi might need medical treatment and be unable to ask for help.
About a dozen police officers spent the next day and a half hunting for Malachi and Holland — who Hopkins had lived with on and off in suburban Baltimore.
By Monday morning, with no word from Holland, who drove off in a late-model Jeep Cherokee, Hopkins began contacting the media. Shortly after 1 p.m. Monday, apparently faced with mounting pressure, Holland tried to sneak Malachi back to his house, said Ivory Hawkins, a Hopkins family friend who was at the apartment at the time.
“He said he didn’t have any way to get Malachi back,” Hawkins said. “I called the police, and they came and arrested him.”
Holland, who told police he works for Southwestern Water Management, is charged with interference with custody. He was being held in the Orient Road Jail with bail set at $2,000.
Durkin, the police spokesman, said that when Holland admitted taking the child, he also said he had stolen $100 from his wife, Jasmine Holland, who lives in Tampa.
Detective O.P. Parrish, who coordinated efforts to find Malachi, said Holland told police he had taken the child to see someone called “Delta Unit 5 on Nebraska.”
Parrish said Holland did not say why he took Malachi.
Before her son was found, Sylvia Hopkins said she hated Tampa and would leave as soon as her son was found.
As she walked away, tightly clutching Malachi, Hopkins smiled and thanked police and the media. Tampa is a fine place, she said.
