An autistic four-year-old boy has been found after getting lost in the southern Alabama woods for more than two days, with his rescuer crediting God for helping him to locate him.
Phenix Wilkerson went missing from his family’s camper in the small town of Clayton on Friday afternoon and was finally located after more than 50 hours by a Good Samaritan after “God had put it on his heart to go help,” reports AL.com.
“He was just looking scared, and he went to cry, but when he seen we weren’t going to hurt him, he was just looking around,’’ said Markeith Williams, the volunteer who found the little boy.
Phenix, who has special needs and is nonverbal, was frightened but appeared to be in good condition when Williams found him on Sunday afternoon.
The boy’s mother, Shyanne Ray, said she was in a “heartbreaking, distraught” state while law enforcement officials and volunteers were out searching.
“I think I am in shock right now because I can’t feel anything,” she told WTVY on Saturday.
Ray said that she had left her son in the care of a friend to walk the short distance to her mother’s home and back, but the camper’s door was ajar, and little Phenix was gone when she returned a short time after.
Since multiple bodies of water and woods surround the area for miles, it was a desperate situation.
Williams, a 25-year-old mechanic from Ozark, said his wife voiced her determination to join the frantic search upon hearing of the emergency.
“She kept bugging me about it all day yesterday,’’ Williams told AL.com. “I told her I was going to church.”
However, he said he had a feeling from God to find Phenix when he woke up on Sunday morning.
“I had my auntie, she’s an evangelist, pray for me before we left because I said it wasn’t going to work if she didn’t,” Williams recounted.
He and his wife, Valencia, went to the command post, where they were put into volunteer groups and sent out on the search.
“We were walking toward the pond, thinking he may have gotten close and gotten in the water,’’ Williams said. “It was hills and ditches, and we searched ditches first.”
“As we got about two miles into the woods, everybody was veering off left and right,’’ he recalled.
“As I was getting closer to him, my heart started rushing, so that’s how I knew I was getting close…I knew it was God with me.”
Williams was walking in a field where the search party believed they had seen small footprints when he spotted a little boy.
“He was laying probably 150 yards from the field,’’ he said. “It was pretty far off. I was going to holler, then I thought I’d get a little closer first.”
Williams said that the child looked up upon hearing his footsteps over the crackling twigs and leaves, and that was when he confirmed it was Phenix.
“He looked up. When I got closer and saw the shirt, I was like, ‘There he is,'” he told the outlet. “Everybody just took off running to where he was.”
According to the hero, Phenix was wearing the same clothes as when he went missing, and he did not appear dirty.
Little Phenix was found at 3:15 p.m. Alabama Law Enforcement Agency Sgt. Jeremy Burkett said the boy was taken to the hospital and is being medically evaluated.
“I was doing that because God sent me to do that,” said Williams.
“I mostly give credit to the man above because, without him, none of us would have found him,” he told WTVY.
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