‘Your arm is gone:’ Winnipeg mom searching for toddler’s missing prosthetic limb

WINNIPEG (City NEWS) – Two-year-old Davy Barchet has been asking about his arm for the last few days.

His mother says her son’s prosthetic arm was stolen Tuesday, after their car was broken into – now she’s asking for people to help find it.

“This was extremely upsetting, it’s another thing that I have to deal with and it’s been a really rough time.”

Lyra Barchet says she left her son Davy’s prosthetic arm in the car after coming home from daycare on Tuesday night. She says she left her car unlocked overnight and came back Wednesday morning to find out that things had been moved around in her car. It was then that she couldn’t find Davy’s arm.

“I didn’t think much of it, except (on) Wednesday morning my car had been gone through,” the single mom said Friday with a shaky voice.

The prosthetic had been at the bottom of a red bag in the car.

“The person who did this took snacks, took my jacket, nothing really of value except for this arm.”

Davy, who was born without his lower left limb arm and with a congenital heart defect, has been wearing the prosthetic since he was just over one.

Now that the arm is missing, Barchet says she has to most likely get a new arm for her son which isn’t easy.

Manitoba Health only pays for a new prosthetic arm every two years and she says Davy hasn’t had it that long. With that, comes a pretty steep cost.

“It’ll be almost $7,000 to replace it but I might not need to do it all myself, but I have to go do all the fittings and I’m working on the frontlines right now and don’t have much time for it,” Barchet explained.

The arm is black with a beige hand and has a dinosaur sticker on it and Barchet says she always kept it in a red War Amps bag when Davy wasn’t wearing it.

Barchet said the cheeky boy with the charming grin is oblivious to the theft but is curious about why everyone keeps talking about his arm.

“He’s more like, ‘Arm, arm.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, your arm is gone’,” she said.

“We’ll get it tomorrow?” Davy has asked her.

A disheartened Barchet said she keeps telling him, “No.”

Then Davy goes about his day without a care in the world.

Barchet posted this incident on her Facebook page to get awareness, along with a $500 reward for whoever finds it. She says she is grateful for all the support she has received.

“One person has offered to 3d print a hand, other people have offered to pay cost of reward, I have some great colleagues who have offered to contribute in any way.” “If you see something that looks out of place and you kind of post it on FB or put a message, it helps.”

“At the end of the day, I think I won’t remember this as the horrible time that I lost Davy’s arm. This is going to be that not-so-great time that I lost Davy’s arm and everybody kind of stepped up to try to help, even if we don’t find it.”

With files from the Canadian Press