US Amb says Americans share Russian outrage over adopted boy being sent home alone on flight

US Amb.: Americans share outrage over stranded boy

WASHINGTON — The U.S. ambassador to Russia said Tuesday he hopes the furor surrounding an American woman’s decision to send a 7-year-boy home to Moscow alone won’t jeopardize adoptions of Russian children by U.S. citizens.

Interviewed on CBS’s “The Early Show” from Moscow, ambassador John Beyrle said outrage over the incident has been expressed in the United States as well as Russia.

Beyrle also said the boy currently is being attended in a Moscow hospital and is “in good hands.”

He said U.S. officials have told Russia “we’re willing to talk about some sort of bilateral understanding where we would ensure that these kinds of things could not happen.”

Last week, the boy was put on a one-way flight to Moscow with a note saying a Russian orphanage failed to disclose the boy’s psychological problems.

A district attorney in Tennessee is investigating child abandonment charges but said Monday that any charges might have to be filed in Virginia because the child flew out of Dulles International Airport .

But the prosecutor for the county where Dulles is located said Tuesday he does not plan to bring charges. Loudoun County prosecutor Jim Plowman called the conduct troubling but said the mere fact that the boy flew from Dulles to Moscow does not give him jurisdiction to prosecute.