Eleven year-old Xavior Harrelson has been missing for over a week since he disappeared from his Montezuma, Iowa mobile home park on May 27, 2021. He was last seen around 11 a.m. wearing a red t-shirt, blue pajama pants, and black high-top shoes. He has brown hair, blue eyes, and stands 4’8” tall.
According to Xavior’s mother, the boy left the mobile home—she reportedly assumed—to play with friends. The mobile home park itself is very close to a nearby park. Diamond Lake County Park spans more than 660 acres of wooded land and includes over 100 campsites for tourists and locals. In the days since Xavior disappeared, the Poweshiek Coutny Sheriff’s Office and the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation have deployed resources to comb the area surrounding the mobile home park, including scent-dogs, ATVs, drones, a dive team, and temperature-sensitive technology. Finding no sign of Xavior, investigators are continuing to develop new leads in the case. Mitch Mortvedt, the assistant director of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, said in a statement, “All we really know for sure right now is that Xavior was reported missing on Thursday and we know what he was possibly wearing when he left the house. Other than that, we don’t know anything for sure.”
The circumstances of Xavior’s disappearance are nebulous, with investigators unsure of whether he got lost while playing with his friends, or if he was taken under more nefarious circumstances. Despite searching within a half-mile radius of the boy’s home, investigators have yet to uncover a trace of what may have happened to Xavior. “It’s certainly suspicious that he seems to have just disappeared and no one has seen him, “Mortvedt said, “but there is no evidence that is definitively pushing the needle one way or another. There is nothing to indicate that his disappearance was criminal, though we are certainly looking at that angle.”
It was Xavior’s family friend who first reported the boy as missing when she did not see him out riding his bike on Thursday morning. It is highly unusual for a neighbor to report a young child like Xavior missing before the parents, but Samantha Rix told KCCI8 in Des Moines that she felt compelled to speak for the little boy, “The other thing I can’t really wrap my head around is why isn’t anybody in the family gone on here? And so that’s why I’m Xavior’s voice. And that’s how I feel. And that’s why I keep doing this, because somebody has to speak for him.”
In excess of 500 volunteers, first-responders, and investigators have dedicated time towards searching for Xavior. It’s the second time the community has had to step up for a missing citizen in only a few short years. Around the same time almost three years ago, the community was searching for 20-year-old Mollie Tibbetts, who disappeared while on a jog. “To be right back here, you know, working out of the sheriff’s office and in the same communities as we were three—almost three years ago—when Mollie disappeared, it’s frightening.”
If you have any information on the disappearance of Xavior Harrelson, you’re asked to call the Poweshiek County Sheriff’s Office tip line at 641-623-2107.