Published: 25 May, 2012
by PETER GRUNER

THE mother of a Holloway teen­ager who has been missing for more than four years accused the police this week of not doing enough to look for him.

Accountancy student Alexander Sloley was 17 when he went missing on the way home from a friend’s house in Edmonton in August 2008.

He had little money, no wallet and no bag with extra clothes to indicate he was planning to run away.

Police have been unable to find a clue to his whereabouts. “It’s like he disappeared off the face of the planet,” said one officer.

Speaking at her home in Thane ­Villas, Alexander’s mother Narissa Tivy, 43, said she has to accept the possibility that after all these years Alex may be dead.

With today (Friday) International Missing Children’s Day, Ms Tivy hoped that even now someone somewhere can end the heartache and mystery of just what happened to her son.

A former pupil at Islington Arts and Media School, Alex was studying accountancy at City and Islington College.

He is described as a typical sports-mad boy who was good at maths and hoped to become an accountant.

Ms Tivy, who is separated from Alex’s father, has three other children: Tasha, 24, Tazrah, 21, and Lattina, eight. Alex will be 21 in August.

“He’d been staying with a friend in Edmonton whose mum is also a friend of mine,” Ms Tivy said. “He was on his way home for his birthday on  August 4 and just never turned up.”

She feels the police could have done more to look for her son. She even contacted Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn who wrote to the police asking if there was anything more than could be done to trace Alex.

Police have always maintained that everything possible was done to find the youth.

Ms Tivy, who has counselling supplied by the police, added: “At the beginning they kept telling me that he had run off and would return, but days turned to weeks and months, and still there was no news.

“I just don’t think that they took Alex’s disappearance seriously enough in the first place. If they had they might have found some clues.”

Some time before he disappeared, Alex had been stopped by police after driving a vehicle under-age and was due to go to court. “Alex wasn’t into drugs or gangs as far as I know,” Ms Tivy said. “And if he was on the run he would have contacted us by now.”

His photograph has appeared on millions of milk cartons in a national campaign launched by charity Missing People and supermarket Iceland.

Ms Tivy gets support from the Pentecostal Church of Refuge in Mayton Street and her family and friends.

“I still take each day as it comes. I pray that he will walk through that door.”

PC Paul Robertson, of Islington’s missing person’s office, said all the stops had been pulled out to find Alex. “There been no confirmed sightings and the circumstances are really baffling,” he said. “Our heart goes out to Ms Tivy whose son appears to have just disappeared off the face of the planet. But this is still an on­going case. We are still looking for him. Someone out there knows where he is and what happened to him.

“Please contact us on 020 7421 0391 if you have any information.”

The Missing People charity has a new free helpline  – 116 000 – and its web address is www.missingkids.co.uk