Eleven-year-old Kareem Granton is basically willing to do anything to get out of doing chores.
My man! Chores suck!
So Kareem ran away from his Brooklyn home last Wednesday and slept on the subway for five days while his mom, Precious, launched a citywide search for him, all because he did not want to clean up dog poop.
Well. That's not great.
"This came down to someone who just didn't want to do his chores," community activist Tony Herbert explained in a press conference, noting that Precious is a "very responsible mother" and there is no history of abuse and Kareem is not a chronic runaway.
Last Wednesday, he was told to pick up after the family dog, Queenie. He refused and ran away to Chuck E. Cheese with a friend. Afterwards, he didn't return. The family held a rally on Sunday to draw attention to Kareem's disappearance. Meanwhile, he was sleeping on the subway and surviving off $10 that his stepdad had given him.
Yesterday, a passerby noticed him and alerted police. "I just had a tantrum in the moment," Kareem later explained. "I knew my mom was looking for me. I didn't know it would turn into this big of a situation."
Gothamist reports that Kareem was too scared of being in trouble to call his mom. Meanwhile, the NYPD simply says, "He got lost. He didn't know how to get home." Now, Precious calls the reunion a "happy ending," and Herbert says Kareem "knows he's going to be punished."
After finding Kareem, hungry and disheveled, an NYPD officer, Dennis Grimm, brought him to McDonald's. Kareem ordered a McGriddle and played with Grimm's German shepherd, Dakota.
"He seemed to perk up a lot after he ate," Grimm says. "He was petting the dog...I think it helped his nerves to settle."
Yeah, just don't tell him to pick up that dog's poop.
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