This is a horrible incident, however, I find it even more horrible that blame is being placed on an agency that is totally unrelated to this horrible crime commited.
This child ran away; under US guidelines any run away in state's custody must be reported within 24 hours to the local police dept. all information is transfered to them and they are responcible to locating the child.
What would have happened to the other children living in that group home had the staff left to track this boy down... Don't get me wrong, I work in foster care and I have driven around for hours searching for a child or chased them down on foot when I see them leave, but you cannot restrain them, you cannot force them to return (those are the perimiters put on by the state themselves). So the option you are left with is contacting the police dept.
It may be unfortunate but several of them are not found, a huge number go and live with their families and hide until they turn 18, some of them hide with friends and unfortunatly there are a number of children, like this one, who are unsuccessful in hiding and bad things happen to them.
This is not the child's fault; any child in a group home, or foster care or even behavioral schools want to be home with their family, they want to live a "normal" life, but these institutions are in place for a reason, the staff could not have left the other children in that home to conduct 24 hour searches for a runaway- it would be nice, but there is no way to do that, their responciblility is to contact the police! Then wait and pray and hope for the best for that child.
Providing such a huge amount of attention in blaming the agency for this child's unfortunate situation is taking away from the real crime and the real issue here which is a horrible family who did something horrible to a child. Any amount of attention diverted from their crime minimizes this childs trauma, it shadows the real issue and prevents true justice...