Ohio man says his son was taken from him at 2. After 16 years of following his son across state lines, he still hopes to reunite with him

Derrick Carr (@unhinged_and_moist), a veteran from Ohio, told social media that he has been searching for his son, Thomas, for 16 years. The father claimed that his son was taken from him when he was just two years old.

“Thomas, if you see this, here is my way of explaining, from my perspective, 16 years of absence,” Carr told TikTok in his viral video message. While his wife was pregnant, Carr was in the army. Stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, he was about to be deployed to Iraq.

He said Thomas was born in 2008, and Carr missed his birth by just an hour after a fourteen-hour flight home. Still, Carr showed a photo of himself with his newborn son as proof that he made it home on time. The father continued to show photos of Thomas with his cousins, his paternal grandmother, and his paternal grandfather, whom Carr disclosed is already deceased.

“You were two years old, and your mother and I had separated. I put her up in my buddy’s house. He was in Germany. You were just a few blocks away,” Carr said. He said it was a rent-free arrangement. But after a while, Carr said his ex and two-year-old moved to a motel. It was a motel in Colorado, just across from his ex’s former workplace.

Carr said he met Mike, his ex’s future husband, at the parking lot of her workplace one day. He didn’t speak to the man. However, Carr said his ex started acting more distant after the interaction.

“All of a sudden, she had said that there’s a wedding in Ohio that she’s gonna go to,” Carr claimed. He had no issue with it, but asked his ex for two weeks with Thomas after their return.

Chasing his son across state lines

“Since I was in the army right at that moment, I took you when I could,” Carr said. He denied choosing the army over his son and explained that he had no control over his time. However, Carr said army life was hard on his relationships, including the one with Thomas’ mother. Regardless, he had an arrangement, and he waited for his son’s return.

But a month after the supposed wedding his ex went to, he still hasn’t seen his son. Carr said he even called his ex’s family members in Ohio, but they revealed that her ex no longer communicated with them. But Carr stopped there, clarifying that it wasn’t his story to tell.

@unhinged_and_moist

Thomas, if you see this you have a MASSIVE family waiting for you here! We all love you and everyone asks about you all the time. Last time I physically held you in my arms was 2010 when we went to the Denver aquarium. Your mom then planned to go to a mutual friend of ours wedding with the agreement that upon her return I get you for a lengthy time to make up for lost time. She agreed unknowingly to me, she never intended to uphold that agreement. As some time passed, mind you I was still in the service and had another 4 years to go on my 2nd contract, I was stuck there in Colorado. I had found out you were living at your moms dads house but only for a little bit. Something happened there that wasn’t good, not sure entirely what but again, not my place to tell that story. You then moved to your mom’s moms house. Short lived there too. Something happened there where police got involved and I received a lengthy police report on the events at that house. You moved then to Belding Michigan where I had a police escort to get you. We were denied at the door and told them they are in contempt of a court order. It was a few months later I received a phone call from your mom asking if I had sent child support to Michigan still. At the time I would send child support via western Union and your mom would go pick it up at the local Walmart. Well she had told me you guys were no longer in Michigan and instead in Nevada. I was told you guys were living with mikes mom as she was having some sort of brain surgery. Whether that was true or not, did not matter. She had stated that you guys haven’t moved yet and intend to. So we made an agreement that she should drive from Nevada to Colorado to drop you off while they continued their roadtrip back to Michigan to grab the household stuff before returning to Colorado to pick you back up, then continue back down to Nevada. Never happened. After some time I took your mom back to court to have the child support lowered as my income had changed from military to civilian. It was there under oath a judge asked your mom if you were still in Neveda and she stated they were not and current residency was in Minnesota. It was summer of 2019 when your mom gave me the username and password for her free legal from her work. It was then I got to talk to you. It was then I was given hope again I’d see you soon. That opportunity was taken from me just as quickly as it came. Please call me bubba, I miss you

♬ original sound – Derrick Carr

“But it wasn’t me that just your mom and stepdad wrote off. It was everybody. All the while, I had court orders to see you,” Carr claimed. He alleged that the paperwork outlined which holidays he was supposed to have custody. Carr also said he was supposed to have telephone access with Thomas and 30 days of summer with him.

“I never got you. For 16 years, I never got you,” Carr alleged. But Carr said he didn’t stop looking. He tracked the family across state lines, from Colorado to Ohio. He reached Michigan, and Carr said he got a police escort in Belding because of trouble involving his ex and Mike. However, Carr still didn’t have luck.

“I chased you down as much as I could without spooking your mom and getting an idea to move again, because I did it several times,” Carr said. However, he had to keep moving, as his son ended up in Pahrump, Nevada. He continued, “I took your mom to court to have the child support lowered, because that was free.” However, before the case went to court, Carr lost track of his ex again. The judge told him his ex was no longer living in Nevada and that she had moved to Minnesota.

A brief phone call

Carr said that in the summer of 2019, his ex called him. He was given an hour to speak with Thomas. Carr recalled, “You told me everything you did in camp, from boating, fishing, archery, all of it.” Similarly, Carr said he used to go to YMCA summer camps. Now, his son is 18, and he is still hoping to reconnect.

“You have every right to know the truth,” Carr said. He advised his son not to be mad at either his mother or stepfather. However, he hopes his son will also ask questions and reach out to him. He adds, “Also, willing to bet that because I was a veteran, I bet you don’t know you have free college. Your parents know that. Get a hold of me, dude.”

He ended his plea by telling his son that he loves him and that not a day goes by that he doesn’t think of him. In a follow-up video, Carr clarified that he found Thomas but is yet to establish a connection with him. But not all children are as lucky to have good fathers. In Boston, another woman is hoping to get full custody of her son after hearing him say a few disturbing words.

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