Redland street named after Jimmy Ryce, whose abduction, murder called attention to child safety

MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. — A portion of a street in Miami-Dade County’s rural Redland area was designated “Jimmy Ryce Avenue” a little more than three decades after the young boy’s abduction and murder.

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Jimmy, 9, was kidnapped at gunpoint when he got off of his bus, just a block from his home, in the area of Southwest 162nd Avenue and 232nd Street on Sept. 11, 1995.

The murderer in this case would end up confessing to killing Jimmy and then he was later convicted and executed for the crime. But in the decades since that time, the family turned their grief into advocacy and launched the Jimmy Ryce Center, primarily with a focus on bringing bloodhounds to law enforcement agencies and other search groups in order to aid and help the search for other missing children in the future.

Now, a portion of Southwest 162nd Avenue has been given the “Jimmy Ryce Avenue” designation to honor him.

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“It’s a tragedy that shook the nation and it was some 30 years ago. And renaming the street where the tragedy took place, in order to recognize him, honor him and honor the work that came after him with the foundation and with our law enforcement, really is the very least that we could do in Miami-Dade County,” Miami-Dade Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins said.

Edward Montizaan, who maintains a memorial in the area, said that Jimmy “had a short life and that was terrible, but out of the tragedy, a lot of good has come with bloodhounds that the law enforcement has been able to get through the Jimmy Ryce Foundation.”

Family members said they focused on bloodhounds, believing that Jimmy would be alive today if a bloodhound had immediately been brought in to search for him.

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