2016 brought its fair share of highs and lows in west central Minnesota. There were many impactful events that touched the entire region.
But, by far, the lowest points of the year were the unusually high number of tragedies involving children, concentrated in the summer and early fall of 2016.
Willmar boys drown
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In June, two Willmar boys drowned in the waters of Willmar's Foot Lake. Idris M. Hussein, 10, and Ahmed Sahane Hashi, 11, were students at Kennedy Elementary School.
The community was spurred to action after they were reported missing by a family member around 6 p.m. June 28. Neighbors in northwest Willmar searched their backyards. Willmar police and members of other agencies checked the land and water.
Related:
2016 Year in Review: Tragedies involving children top regional news stories
2016 Year in Review: Other top stories
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2016 Year in Review: In other news
Their bodies were found by a water search team at about 10 p.m. in shallow water near the entrance to the Kandiyohi County Fairgrounds on Willmar's north side.
In the aftermath, more than 60 people gathered in the parking lot outside of the Rice Memorial Hospital emergency room, waiting for news. The boys were later pronounced dead at the hospital.
Community members were restless after the tragedy. As a direct reaction, Willmar Community Education and Recreation and the Kandiyohi County Area Family YMCA teamed up with area businesses to offer free community water safety classes in August, hoping to prevent future tragedy. As many as 150 children, parents and siblings attended.
Missing girl found dead
August also saw tragedy. Authorities in Meeker County issued an Amber Alert on Aug. 20 for a missing 5-year-old girl named Alayna Ertl.
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Her mother, Kayla Ertl, told authorities she put her daughter to bed around 2 a.m. at the family's Watkins home, according to the Amber Alert.
The next time she checked on her daughter, around 8 a.m. Aug. 20, Alayna was missing.
So was a man named Zachary Todd Anderson, who had reportedly stayed at the Ertl home that night.
Authorities believed Anderson had left the house with Alayna in her father's white pickup truck. The location of a cellphone in the vehicle was last tracked at 9 a.m. in Todd County, and an Amber Alert was issued.
Law enforcement located the stolen vehicle that afternoon at a cabin in Cass County, 35 miles northwest of Brainerd. They arrested Anderson and located Alayna in a swampy area. She was pronounced dead on the scene.
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Anderson was immediately jailed. In October, he was indicted by a grand jury and arraigned on 19 criminal charges, including eight counts of first-degree murder, one count of second-degree intentional murder and four counts of kidnapping.
If convicted, he could face life in prison.
Hundreds attended a memorial service and funeral for Alayna, remembering her as a smiley girl who loved the movie "Frozen," dressing up in dresses and "clicky shoes," and singing the "sun song" ("You Are My Sunshine").
Longtime Minn. mystery solved
In September, another kidnapping case was solved, this one a mystery that had haunted central Minnesota for nearly 30 years.
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The remains of a St. Joseph boy, Jacob Wetterling, were discovered in rural Paynesville after a former Paynesville man, Danny Heinrich, confessed to kidnapping and killing Jacob.
Jacob was 11 in 1989 when he was abducted on a dirt road near the home of his parents, Patty and Jerry Wetterling, in rural St. Joseph, about 25 miles from Paynesville.
Jacob's abduction shocked and changed Minnesota and its children for a generation. His parents never stopped their search for their son and inspired a national advocacy group for missing and abused children.
Heinrich confessed to Jacob's murder and kidnapping as part of plea negotiations in federal pornography charges, for which he was arrested in October 2015. At that time, he was also named a "person of interest" in the Wetterling case.
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Court documents filed earlier in the summer in the Heinrich case detailed the similarities between Jacob's kidnapping on Oct. 22, 1989; the Jan. 13, 1989, abduction and sexual assault of a 12-year-old Cold Spring boy; and "a string of sexually motivated assaults of young boys in the Paynesville, Minn., area in the mid- to late 1980s."
Heinrich later pleaded guilty to one count of child pornography and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. As part of the plea agreement, he was not charged with the Wetterling murder.
Speaking to local media outlets, Patty and Jerry Wetterling said they specifically did not use the word "closure" to describe what had happened. They said it was "answers." Closure, they said, would never come.
