Ask 8-year-old Isaiah Kiss of Uniontown about the theft of his wheelchair from his family's garage last weekend, and he'll spell out "S-A-D."
The first-grade student and his family are trying to grasp how anyone could steal a wheelchair from a boy who can't walk.
"This is just so cruel. I still cry every time I think about it," said Isaiah's mother, Traci Kiss.
The theft was discovered Monday about 7:45 a.m. when Traci Kiss went to the garage off Murray Avenue to retrieve the customized wheelchair to put in Isaiah's school van, according to Uniontown police.
"It wasn't anywhere in there, and I just started crying," she said.
Isaiah has spina bifida, a birth defect that affects the spinal cord and has impacted his growth and development.
Tracy Kiss said the wheelchair, equipped for Isaiah's height and special needs, "really is his lifeline to the world." It was fitted for Isaiah, a student at Menallen Elementary School, slightly more than a year ago.
Kiss said Isaiah is paralyzed from the middle of his back down through his legs. The chair is equipped with levers designed so that Isaiah can operate it with his left hand, which is deformed.
"I don't know how long he can go in his old, green wheelchair because his legs are so scrunched up. But he loves school so much, it would kill him to stay home," Traci Kiss said.
Kiss said she put the wheelchair in the garage behind the house Friday about 3:15 p.m. after the school van dropped Isaiah at home. It was gone Monday and was the only item taken.
"They left behind the chair cushion and everything else in the garage," she said.
Police Officer David Rutter said the door was unlocked, and there was no sign of forced entry.
"I did catch some of the neighborhood kids one time riding it down the alley and took it off them. I never thought anything like this would happen because the (garage door) is behind the fence" in the yard, Kiss said.
Police canvassed the neighborhood, to no avail.
Traci Kiss said she had Isaiah's older brother, Joshua, 13, and sisters Heather, 9, and Alexis, 6, check with neighborhood children to see if someone was playing a prank.
But there still is no word on the wheelchair.
Police said several people willing to donate a wheelchair have called the station.
But Traci Kiss, who could not estimate the value of the chair except to say it is more than "several thousand dollars," was still holding out hope the thief would show some compassion and return it to the family or police.
"It fits him just right and was so light. I just hope no one turned it in to get money for the metal," she said.
"It's just a shame thinking someone would do something like this to a kid."
Anyone with information on the theft is asked to telephone police at 724-430-2929.
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