A four-year old-boy who went missing from his day care facility last Monday afternoon was found safe and sound shortly after in a nearby residence.
Staff-Sergeant Dave Beach of the Vanderhoof RCMP said that the boys babysitter had been outside with the boy and had gone back into the apartment for a number of seconds – when she came back out he was gone.
Nechako Valley Search and Rescue (NVSAR) received a request for assistance from the RCMP at 4:40 p.m. on August 22. Eight NVSAR volunteers responded to help out.
“With a four-year-old boy you obviously want to get things ramped up as fast as possible so we had eight members on route and three or four of them were there within 10 minutes,” said Chris Mushumanski, President of NVSAR.
When they arrived at the scene police were already conducting interviews and going from door-to-door in the area he went missing on Douglas Street, behind McLeod Elementary School.
Meanwhile NVSAR volunteers started to adopt a containment strategy due to the number of trails in the area.
“We were looking at trying to contain him to a certain area so we put some people – at the ends of trails so that if he had already started down a trail, when he came out at a junction or a location we would have someone there to catch up to him,” said Mushumanski.
Within 40 minutes of the search beginning, one of the constables who was going door-to-door heard some whimpering and crying coming from an apartment, he went in and located the boy.
“The little guy walking into an unlocked house and the door closed and he couldn’t get out,” said Beach.
“There was nobody in the house … so the little guy was really scared,” he said.
“It was a very quick and joyful reunion with mom and dad,” said Mushumanski.
