Today marks one year since Avonte Oquendo disappeared from his Queens school.
Loved ones will gather in for a vigil commemorating the anniversary.
Avonte was the 14-year-old with autism who ran out of his Long Island City school.
His remains were found in the East River in January, after a months-long citywide search.
Saturday, Oquendo’s family continued their push for heightened school security laws, and for some staff members at the Riverview School to be fired.
“There’s not a day that goes by that I wish he was here. And because of the neglect from the employee’s of the school, because they didn’t do their jobs, I don’t have my son. And I just want everybody to know, that you know, he may be a special needs kid—but he was my baby,” said Oquendo’s mother, Vanessa Fontaine.
“There has to be a re-training of both the department of education personnel and the personnel in the school safety division, so that they’re aware of what happened and that they’re aware they need not to let it happen again,” said Fontaine’s attorney, David Perecman.
Mayor Bill de Blasio signed a new school safety law named after Avonte in August.
The law requires the Department of Education to evaluate the need for alarms on all elementary schools by May 30, 2015—and come up with a timeline for installing them.
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