Family says body found Friday matches description of missing KC teen Jayden Robker
Family of 13-year-old Jayden Robker, who went missing more than a month ago in Kansas City’s Northland, said a body found Friday matches the description of the teen.
They are awaiting autopsy results to know for sure.
Several police agencies responded Friday morning to a wooded area near North Broadway and Northwest Englewood Road, where Gladstone police confirmed a body had been discovered. Authorities spent hours Friday combing the wooded area near a pond where the body was found.
Authorities said they would not be releasing the victim’s name until Saturday at the earliest.
Jayden went missing Feb. 2.
He was last seen at Northwest Plaza Drive and Northwest Plaza Avenue in the Northland. His family said he left their home after school that day to ride his electric skateboard. They say no one in the family had seen him since.
A media release on Jayden’s disappearance wasn’t posted until four days after he went missing. The boy’s mother, Heather Robker, and a spokesperson with the Kansas City Police Department said the reason it wasn’t posted immediately, in part, was because they couldn’t find a current photo of him right away.
Capt. Corey Carlisle, a spokesman for the KCPD, said despite the “delay in information exchange” in getting the news release out, detectives immediately began investigating the case the night when he was reported missing.
On Sunday, dozens of people gathered to participate in a canvass aimed at increasing awareness about Jayden’s disappearance. On Wednesday, the FBI announced it was offering a $5,000 reward for information about his whereabouts.
An ambitious, energetic teen
Jayden has three younger brothers and two younger sisters, his mother told The Star last week. He was often there to greet his siblings as they got off the school bus, then played hide-and-seek and watched movies on their tablets at home.
Robker’s eldest loved to spend his time playing Pokémon and skateboarding, and lately, her husband had been teaching him to box.
Recently, Jayden had conjured up the idea to start his own car washing business, in the hopes of making and saving his own money, said Robker, who described her son as ambitious, energetic, bubbly and funny. She said he saw his valuable Pokémon cards as an opportunity to kick-start his savings account.
So on Feb. 2, when Robker came home to squeeze in a nap between her day job and her night job, her husband told her that Jayden was off riding his black skateboard. She believes he went out that day hoping to sell some of his Pokémon cards to help start that business.
When she woke up for her night shift, Robker was alarmed to see Jayden hadn’t returned to their home near the intersection of Northwest Plaza Drive and Northwest Plaza Avenue.
In the weeks since he went missing, family and friends organized searches for the missing teen, hoping to bring him home.
