Police in Columbus, Ohio are investigating a routine smash-and-grab robbery that was anything but routine for one little boy.
Four-year-old Sora Coate, who is deaf in both ears, received a cochlear implant in his left ear on May 17. That same day, police said an unknown thief or thieves broke into his mother’s car and stole the equipment he needs to make it work.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Columbus Police Lt. Matt Harris told WTHR News. “This item is of absolutely no value to them. But it means everything to this little boy.”
Earlier that day, Coate had been fitted with a cochlear implant in his left ear. According to his mother, Laura Coate, Sora was one year old when she learned he was both deaf and autistic.
“He’s just the best thing in my life,” Laura Coate told WTHR News. “He’s deaf in both ears. He was a year old when I found out. But he’s always happy and when he’s happy, I’m happy.”
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A cochlear implant is an advanced form of hearing aid which uses electrical currents to bypass damaged hair cells in the cochlea and stimulate remaining nerve fibres directly, according to the American Cochlear Implant Alliance.
Properly applied, the device is intended to “restore the ability to perceive sounds and understand speech by individuals with moderate to profound hearing loss.”
In December 2015, Sora had a cochlear implant put in his right ear, the result of which his mother documented in the video below.
Coate said she left a backpack containing multiple accessories for the implant – a battery, a microphone, and a processor – in the car overnight. When she went to her car in the morning, she knew something was wrong.
“There was a big hole on his side of the car. It was just busted glass,” Coate said. “The first thing I thought was – ‘oh no, what did they take?'”
According to ABC-6 News, a portable DVD player, a coin purse and of course the backpack itself were also stolen.
Now police are asking whoever stole the backpack and the necessary parts to return them to their rightful owners – no questions asked.
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