Search underway for missing 3-year-old boy “lost” by allegedly drunk father in Pasadena

Dozens of officers and volunteers were frantically combing Pasadena neighborhoods Sunday evening for a missing 3-year-old after discovering that a man arrested for public intoxication was the boy’s father and that the boy was nowhere to be found.

The missing child is Dylan Kurihara, who is described as 32 inches tall, 35 pounds, with shoulder-length brown hair and brown eyes. He was last seen wearing a blue-and-brown checkered long-sleeved shirt and dark blue pants.

One or more witnesses last saw the child with his father, 23-year-old Joe Kurihara, at 9:30 p.m. Saturday as they left a parking structure at Cordova Avenue and Euclid Street in a 2001 Lexus RX 300. The four-door silver SUV, with a license plate of 4UHY191, also has not been found.

“We’re canvassing the area,” said Janet Pope Givens, a spokeswoman for the Pasadena Police Department. “The knock and talk is still going on.”

The search did not begin until Sunday morning, well after Pasadena police took the father into custody. When officers arrested Kurihara about 10:35 p.m. Saturday, the man was on foot and alone near 300 E. Green St, Givens said. Officers did not know that his son was supposed to be with him.

The man said nothing about his son, Givens said. The West Covina resident later claimed he had no memory of his son’s being with him.

Kurihara and the boy had attended a wedding at a Masonic lodge in Pasadena. The boy’s mother also was at the wedding and said she saw the father leave with the boy. When she hadn’t heard from either of them for hours, she began to call police stations and hospitals. The woman, whose name has not been released, reached the Pasadena police at about 8 a.m. Her call immediately launched a search for the child and the car.

Kurihara is being held at the Pasadena city jail in lieu of $10,000 bail.