Missing Boy's Mom: 'It's Not Too Late'
F A Y E T T E V I L L E, N.C., May 1 -- Photos of little Tristen "Buddy" Myers show a happy apple-cheeked boy — but his life was anything but picture perfect before he went missing from his great aunt's rural home more than two years ago.
Tristen, who was just 4 years old when he disappeared, had already lived in two different homes, away from his mother who was just 15 when she had him.
At one point, the boy was hit by a car driven by his drunken grandfather and the accident left him with a burned neck and a fractured leg.
Then, one day after a doctor's visit, no one could find the boy, and the family had lost hope of finding him — until a boy called Eli Quick ended up in a Chicago hospital last month.
Now Tristen's mother Raven Myers, a 20-year-old exotic dancer, says she hopes suspicions that Eli could be her son turn out to be true. She says she wants a second chance to be a good mom.
Too Late?
"He should've been brought up better," Myers told ABCNEWS' Good Morning America. "I don't think it's too late at all."
Myers says Eli shares the same facial features, scars and speech impediment as her boy, Tristen.
Eli showed up in an Evanston, Ill., hospital with a man who asked staffers to treat the boy for his "aggressive behavior." The staff became suspicious and called police when the man, Ricky Quick, tried to leave with the boy.
The man insists that the boy is not Tristen. He says the boy was born to a prostitute named Laura in 1995. Ricky Quick told police that the woman handed over the child when he was just an infant. He said she told him he was the father and he named him Eli.
After hospital workers called police, Ricky Quick was arrested on earlier charges of shoplifting and the boy was turned over to social workers.
Raven Myers says she does not recognize Ricky Quick from the pictures she has seen of the man on TV.
Authorities conducted DNA tests Monday to determine whether he is Tristen. Authorities now say the DNA results should be available within 48 hours
