The city of Toronto has been brought to tears by an adventurous 3-year-old boy who headed out in the dead of night wearing next to nothing, only to freeze to death in the frigid cold.
Little Elijah Marsh had slipped out of his grandmother’s apartment around 4 a.m. Thursday, clad only in a diaper, a T-shirt and his boots. Volunteers combed a North York neighborhood after the toddler’s family awoke to find him gone.
His tiny body was found about 1,000 feet from where he started, huddled next to an air condition unit in the corner of an apartment complex about 10:30 a.m.
Hundreds had volunteered to search for him. Police wept as they carried his cold body to an ambulance.
And by Friday, a crowd-sourcing website had raised more than $100,000 in less than 24 hours. More than 3,000 people donated money.
The site was started by a perfect stranger to the Marsh family. Toronto resident Justin Kozuch, like so many in the Canadian city, was heartbroken by the boy’s death.
“I have a 3-year-old son,” Kozuch told the Toronto Star. “What happened to Elijah could have been my child,” he said. “It could have been anybody’s child, and unfortunately it was somebody’s child.”
Surveillance video shows the little boy in the apartment building’s lobby, looking up at the door handle, which looms above his head.
Once he pushed it open and headed outside, the door locked behind him.
Kozuch says he has no idea what he’ll say to the boy’s family when he gives them the site’s donations.
“There’s no words,” he told the paper.
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