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“That noise he makes when he is outside is DREADFUL!!!!!!!!!! It scares the hell out of my normal children!!!!!!!!,” the letter states.

“At first I couldn’t believe what I was reading,” Millson said, adding that she was shaking in disbelief. “It’s just so sick.”

Begley is also more than distraught over the letter.

“The more you go on, the worse it gets,” Begley told City News of the note against her son. “It ends with, ‘like having him euthanized?!’”

The family is working with police to try to hunt down the person behind the letter, and Durham officers have been working since Friday “to see if there is any criminality that went on.”

Police say they are taking the letter seriously. Max’s mother, who is in a wheelchair with multiple sclerosis, said police told her that they had never seen a letter “that despicable.”

Before the incident, the only hostility the family had sensed in the Newcastle neighbourhood was four years ago, the 44-year-old said.

At the time, Max loved to throw a ball in the backyard and as he often threw it over fences, Millson had written her name and address on it, Begley said.

One day it arrived in the yard tattered, she said.

“They took the time to shred the ball with scissors and throw it back over.”

Begley added the family did not know what yard the ball was thrown into.

Millson said Max is a wonderful, sweet and lovable boy with a 16-year-old brother who was “infuriated” and

“disgusted” by the letter.

On Sunday night, at least 120 people waited outside the home for more than an hour in order show their support, Begley said including families with autistic children who drove down from Oshawa.