A 3-year-old boy who went missing for four days last week was found in a wooded area outside Plantersville, Texas, on Saturday — alone, afraid and dehydrated, but very much alive.
Christopher Ramirez disappeared about 1:30 p.m. Wednesday after wandering from his home on Deer Park Lane, off a rural two-lane country road in Grimes County, according to KTRK-TV in Houston.
KBTX reported the boy had chased a neighbor’s dog into the nearby woods and vanished.
A frantic four-day search involving hundreds of volunteers and law enforcement agencies lasted until about 11:45 a.m. Saturday, when an alert landowner came upon the child off FM 1486 near Highway 249, KTRK reported, citing Grimes County Sheriff Don Sowell.
He was found not far from where authorities had been searching, Sowell said.
Emergency personnel breathed a collective sigh of relief and immediately contacted the boy’s mother, Araceli Nunez, who was reunited with Christopher before he was taken to Texas Children’s Hospital in The Woodlands for treatment, the station reported.
“They said, ‘The child was found alive,’ I believe he said 5 miles from where he went missing,” one of the searchers said over a police radio, according to KTRK. “I believe a citizen located him in the woods. He is alive. He is thirsty. He’s with his mother, and he’s going to the hospital.”
The boy’s grandfather, Juan Nunez, told the station that Christopher had removed his clothes and was scratched up from being in the wild for several days.
He said the child appeared unharmed, and authorities have not indicated that he was ever in contact with anyone during the time he was missing. Police even searched the homes of two registered sex offenders who lived nearby, but that was a dead end.
“There’s nothing to show us at this point of any foul play or abduction,” Sowell said during the height of the search, KBTX reported.
Search dogs found the boy’s scent, but the trail went cold at a small pond, KBTX reported.
Police were unable to immediately retrace the boy’s steps over the previous four days and were puzzled because they saw no signs of him in the woods of southern Grimes County during all that time.
“Hardly no clues to go on, we were running on prayers, four-wheel drive and overdrive to be honest with you because we had nothing else,” Sowell said, according to reports. “We had nothing else.”
An elderly neighbor was the last person to see the child wandering after a dog on a road near his home, KTRK reported.
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