Thank goodness — sometimes — for unlocked doors.
After frantically searching for more than eight hours for a 6-year-old boy who authorities identified as nonverbal and autistic and had wandered from home in the freezing cold, police said late Sunday, Feb. 1, that he had been found and was “healthy and happy.”
Throughout the day, authorities sent at least three “endangered missing” alerts that caused phones throughout the area to buzz and journalists to report on Johnathan Skattebo, who was last seen at about 3 p.m. in Madison Heights.
However, in contrast to a metro Detroit missing-child case in June that involved a toddler who was found in the Clinton River and taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead, this story has a much happier ending.
Madison Heights Police Chief Brent LeMerise said in a televised news conference just before midnight, that he was “very relieved” that the 4-foot-tall, 65-pound boy was found about 20 minutes ago and “is alive.”
The 6-year-old made his way out of the potentially deadly cold and, the chief said, into a house through an unlocked door while the home residents were out. When the residents returned, they saw the boy — and called police.
The chief said the boy — whose family had not yet, but soon would, see him — was “in what appears to be in good condition” had been taken to a local hospital “just to be checked out as a precaution.”
The child was last seen near the 28000-block of Hales Street, but was located, LeMerise said, in the home, which was only about a block away from where he went missing. The boy, one of the alerts has said, was wearing a winter coat and boots.
A home security camera, the chief said, recorded the boy wandering off.
The alert noted the boy “often hides in chilly dark spots.”
“Was he cold?” a reporter asked at the news conference.
No, the chief answered, adding that as a matter of fact, he was taking a shower.
And the chief — who gave shoutouts to the “citizens of Madison Heights” and other communities, as well as the law enforcement agencies — said he wasn’t at the scene, but by the accounts relayed to him, when police went to the house, it was a “warm welcome.”
Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or fwitsil@freepress.com
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: 6-year-old boy who went missing in the cold in Madison Heights is found
Reporting by Frank Witsil, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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