Disappearance of Dylan Ehler

Dylan Ehler is a Canadian boy who disappeared on May 6, 2020 while allegedly playing by a river near his house in Truro, Nova Scotia. Last seen on Elizabeth Street before his disappearance, which occurred during strict social distancing restrictions at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dylan became the subject of numerous news articles, podcasts and videos throughout Canada. Dylan's parents, Ashley Brown and Jason Ehler, argued that the police response to the disappearance should have been stronger. They also brought to court allegations of cyberbullying, accusing social media user Tom Hurley, who believed that Dylan was killed by someone within his immediate family and had created a Facebook group on the subject. Background: Dylan Norman John Ehler was three years old when he went missing from his grandmother’s (Dorothy Parsons') backyard on Elizabeth Street in Truro, Nova Scotia. Dylan's mother, Ashley Brown, had gone to meet a friend for coffee and had dropped the boy off to be babysat by Dorothy. Ashley and Jason Ehler had recently been in a domestic dispute involving a broken cell phone at the time. According to Dorothy, Dylan had been in the backyard with her pet dog, and went missing when Dorothy went to tether the dog to its lead. "I went to tie the dog on her lead and I turn around and Dylan is just gone. Gone. I have no explanation," Parsons claimed, and argued that she believed that somebody had stolen Dylan. Police investigators, who began looking into the case six hours after Dylan's disappearance, believed that the boy might have fallen into Lepper Brook, which fed into Salmon River, a waterway in Truro known for a strong undercurrent. Dylan was last seen wearing a camouflage winter jacket with a fur hood and United States flag patches on the arms and chest, a red dinosaur t-shirt, camouflage jogging pants, and grey-and-orange rubber boots. The rubber boots were all that was left of Dylan after his disappearance, having been found in the water by firefighters. Allegations of police misconduct: Ashley Brown and Jason Ehler have since argued that the inability to find Dylan is related in part to the lack of prompt response time by authorities, and have expressed criticism toward volunteer rescue workers aiding in the search. According to Ashley, "they never treated Dylan’s case like a criminal investigation. They just treated it like a search and rescue. I know that they didn't block off any streets. They didn't stop the public from coming into the crime scene of the area that he went missing and they were very late on issuing alerts and getting help. So I think that tunnel vision did have a play in that. Once they found the boots and that was it, that's where he went and essentially the police tell us that we need to accept it. And move on." Police searched the waterways near Dorothy Parson's backyard for several days, using underwater cameras and thermal imaging devices, as well as rigging up a mannequin with similar bodily proportions to Dylan, putting it in the water to test what would happen. Ashley Brown's videos: After Dylan's disappearance, disturbing videos were discovered posted to the social media platform TikTok by Ashley Brown. One video featured Ashley smoking marijuana and calling Dylan a "motherfucker" to his face, then telling him that he would get her sent to jail one day. Another video had been posted of Ashley singing, to the tune of "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" from Disney's Frozen; "Will you help me hide a body? Come on, we can’t delay... no one can see him on the floor... get him out the door, before he can decayyyyyyy..." The videos had been deleted by Ashley, then reposted to a true crime website, after which they were eventually removed from there, as well. They are still publicly available elsewhere. Snippets of Ashley's TikTok videos can be found featured in the W5 documentary by CTV News, Where's Dylan?. Public response: In the wake of Dylan's disappearance, and in the light of Ashley Brown's video uploads, various online communities considered that Ashley or another family member had murdered Dylan and hidden his body somewhere. Katherine Laidlaw of Wired considered that this public response was in part fuelled by the rural nature of Eastern Canada and the high rate of missing persons in the province, noting that much of Nova Scotia was covered with thick forestry and undeveloped land, and that the town of Truro was most famous for "being the headquarters of one of the world’s oldest underwear factories." A Facebook group was started by Tom Hurley (using the name "Tom Hubley") with over 17,000 members at its height, where the case was debated and it was alleged that one of Dylan's family members had killed him. Dylan was jokingly compared to fictional character Georgie from the Stephen King book It, a little boy who was killed by a clown while sailing a paper boat in the water. The Ehler-Brown Family was also accused of negligence toward Dylan, leading to Halifax lawyer Allison Harris enacting Nova Scotia's "Intimate Images and Cyber-protection Act" in order to have Hurley's Facebook group removed. A settlement was reached in August 2021, in which Hurley was forbidden from contacting the Ehler-Brown Family, and from creating any new internet groups about the disappearance of Dylan. This sparked a debate about the general public's right to speculate on true crime cases even if it offended those involved, versus crossing the line into illegal content, which the Intimate Images and Cyber-protection Act does not define. Ehler-Brown Family response: Ashley Brown, Jason Ehler and Dorothy Parsons have consistently maintained their lack of involvement in Dylan's disappearance. Dorothy in particular has suggested that the boy may have been kidnapped while she was busy with her dog, although the police do not suspect foul play. In an interview for CTV News, Ashley Brown admitted that her TikTok videos were inappropriate, but argued that the public has taken them out of context; the Frozen dead body song video in particular was intended, according to Ashley, to coincide with an ongoing internet trend of posting parodies of Frozen soundtracks, and Ashley's video was meant to be morbid humour in no way related to Dylan. A year after Dylan's disappearance, the Ehler-Brown Family placed numerous paper boats in Lepper Brook as a form of memorial to the boy, which the public could join in on. "Today was more of a gathering for Dylan, to talk about him and spread awareness, to hold a special moment for him," said Jason Ehler. "He would have loved to have thrown boats in the water." Ehler Alert petition: In the hopes of establishing a stronger public alert system in Nova Scotia, Ashley Brown and Jason Ehler started a petition for setting up the "Ehler Alert", a public alert system which would facilitate "the rapid distribution of information to the public about young children lost in potentially hazardous environments," according to Jason.