Boy found dead on I-70

School officials in Creston, Iowa, told 11-year-old Levi Boothe’s classmates their friend died in an auto accident.

The boy’s body was found Tuesday night on the shoulder of Interstate 70, just east of the Douglas County-Leavenworth County line. But his death may not have been an accident.

Levi’s father, Raymond Boothe, 34, a union carpenter and karaoke enthusiast from Cameron, Mo., was being held Wednesday in the Leavenworth County Jail suspected of murder.

He was found by Lawrence Police early Wednesday morning walking down 27th Street with three young children after he sailed a four-door Dodge sedan through the intersection of 27th Street and Lawrence Avenue in southwest Lawrence.

The car hit a curb and went airborne, ripped through two fences and clipped two trees before coming to rest behind a house. Police said the spectacular crash was Raymond Boothe’s attempt to kill himself and his other three children hours after his oldest child was abandoned on Interstate 70.

Authorities in three states worked Wednesday to piece together the bizarre case. Many facts, including exactly how and why young Levi Boothe died, remained unclear at day’s end.

Struggle on the highway

Anonymous callers to the Journal-World said they had seen the boy, who was developmentally disabled, struggling on the highway before he was found dead. One caller said she first thought the boy was a deer trying to cross the highway. Wednesday morning, a short, gruesome trail of blood remained on the road where the boy’s body was found.

Lawrence Police said Raymond Boothe told them Levi Boothe had been left on the highway.

“He indicated the fourth child was on the Kansas Turnpike and was physically disabled,” Sgt. Mike Pattrick said.

Police in Cameron, Mo., said the boy was “mute” or barely able to speak because of his disabilities, and that he suffered seizures.

School officials in Creston said Levi was “severely and profoundly disabled.”

He had lived at Midwest Opportunities, a Creston group home, since 1995.

Larry Otten, director of special education in the Creston school district, said Levi Boothe had brain tumors that destroyed his ability to speak, and that he was heavily medicated. He also wore a leg brace.

Otten said the tragic chain of events leading to the boy’s death started Tuesday with what school officials thought was an ordinary and happy family outing.

Raymond Boothe came to the school about noon Tuesday, Otten said, offering to take Levi out for french fries and ice cream, two of the boy’s favorite treats.

“He came here acting like everything was cool,” Otten said. “He seemed to be under control. He said he was going to take him to lunch, and he never came back.”

When the boy had not been returned by evening, said Timothy Kenyon, county attorney in Union County, Iowa, police were notified by officials at Midwest Opportunities.

Heading south

Raymond Boothe apparently drove south from Creston, the Union County seat, with his son. Sheriff’s deputies in neighboring Ringgold County, found some of Levi’s clothing in a yard near Kellerton, 45 miles south of Creston.

Randy Hullinger, chief deputy with the Ringgold County Sheriff’s Department, said the clothes  with Levi’s initials on them  were discovered between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. near a paved county road. The person who owned the land where the clothes were found apparently had no connection to the case, Hullinger said.

The clothes are being forwarded to the Union County Sheriff’s Department for laboratory tests, Hullinger said.

Boothe apparently then drove to Osborn, Mo., 5 miles northwest of Cameron, and picked up his other three children at the home of their aunt, Stacey Perry.

Hal Riddle, police chief in Cameron, said the children  Makayla, 6; Nicole, 9; and Mitchell, 7  were staying with Perry in Osborn while their mother, Lisa Boothe, 31, attended a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program in the Kansas City area.

When Perry realized the children were missing, she called police in Cameron about 6 p.m. She also called Lisa Boothe, who checked out of the rehab program and drove to Cameron, contacting police about the situation about 7 p.m., Riddle said.

In Kansas

At 9:24 p.m. Tuesday, Leavenworth County dispatchers received a 911 call reporting a pedestrian had been struck on Interstate 70 near the Douglas County line, said Maj. David Zoellner, Leavenworth County undersheriff.

“When we got there, we discovered a body on the interstate,” he said.

The body was later identified as Raymond Levi Boothe, 11. Zoellner said the boy was lying along the north shoulder of the westbound lanes.

A few hours later, about 12:20 a.m. Wednesday, Lawrence Police responded to a report of an injury accident at 27th Street and Lawrence Avenue.

When officers arrived, Boothe and his three surviving children were found walking along 27th Street.

Boothe was placed under arrest at the crash scene.

“Boothe said the crash was not an accident,” Pattrick said. “The crash was intentional to end the life of everyone in the car.”

The children were taken into protective custody at Lawrence Memorial Hospital, where they were treated for cuts and bruises.

As they were being tended to, police called Lisa Boothe in Cameron to let her know her three children had been in an accident. But she told them she had four children.

Looking for Levi

Police returned to the accident scene to look for the 11-year-old boy. When they didn’t find him, they questioned Raymond Boothe again. That’s when the father told them the fourth child was on the turnpike. Police then called the Highway Patrol and learned of the body on I-70, Pattrick said.

Raymond Boothe also had been taken to the hospital by police as a precautionary measure. Pattrick said he didn’t know what, if any, injuries Raymond Boothe suffered.

At the hospital, Boothe became combative and struck a police officer who tried to question him, Pattrick said.

Leavenworth County sent officers to LMH to question Raymond Boothe, Pattrick said. Police turned Boothe over to Leavenworth County authorities, who took him to Leavenworth County.

Zoellner would say little about the sheriff’s investigation Wednesday, other than that the incident was a possible homicide. He said charges probably would be filed today.

“I can’t comment on anything that has to do with the investigation,” Zoellner said repeatedly during a news conference Wednesday afternoon, declining even to confirm whether Raymond Boothe was in custody.

Later Wednesday night a jailer confirmed Boothe was in custody on suspicion of murder.

Levi had tuberous sclerosis, said Michael Handler, the pathologist who performed his autopsy. The genetic disease left a rash on his face and malformed his brain, heart and kidney.

Handler would not say what caused the boy’s death.

Lawrence Police also are continuing their investigation. No charges have been filed here, Pattrick said. Likely are three charges of attempted murder and assault on a police officer for the altercation at the hospital.

Attempted murder-suicide

The ferocity of the crash at 27th Street and Lawrence Avenue stunned residents.

“I went out there, nobody was in the car,” said Janney Meyer, 2904 W. 27th St. Meyer said she heard the crash that missed a shed in her back yard by inches.

As police were walking through his back yard and measuring the angles of the crash, Craig Crane, 2900 W. 27th St., said he didn’t hear the crash.

But police rang his doorbell about 2:30 a.m. and said they were doing an investigation in his back yard.

“The reason I think there wasn’t any noise, he was airborne about 75 feet,” Crane said. He said he could tell the car was airborne because it took out part of a Russian olive tree.

“It was a rude awakening,” Crane said.

Wednesday night the surviving Boothe children remained in protective custody at LMH and were expected to stay there until the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services determined where to place them.

Pattrick said it could take accident investigators here a week to complete their report on the Boothe family’s crash in southwest Lawrence.

“The necessity of rushing the reports isn’t there since he’s in custody outside our jurisdiction,” he said.

He said the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office typically would wait until after the Leavenworth charges were filed before proceeding with any charges here.

Kenyon, the Union County attorney, said investigators in Iowa were trying to help Kansas investigators re-create a timeline of events.

“The positive picture I’m using, the thing we can focus on, is at least it started out with a dad taking a son for french fries and ice cream on a nice summer day,” he said. “That’s the picture we’re holding onto. That gives us a much better picture of the world than some of this crap.”