A missing three-year-old boy in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, was found safe thanks to law enforcement’s use of a thermal drone.
When deputies got a call about a boy who had wandered into a more than 100-acre cornfield at night, they knew the job would require the use of the device to locate the child, the Fond du Lac County Sheriff’s Office said Friday, noting that the local police department’s Technology Response Group also helped in the operation.
The sheriff’s office posted the drone footage, which shows the area as the drone looks for the boy. A few minutes into the clip, a person is seen among the rows of corn. Moments later, the video shows several rescuers headed directly toward the child:
A body camera recording caught the moment officers and other rescuers pushed through the seemingly endless rows of corn to reach the child. At one point, someone is heard comforting the child.
“I got ya! We got him. We’re right here, buddy. We’re right here. We’re gonna go back, and we’re gonna find your mom, okay? We’re gonna go find your parents,” the rescuer tells the boy.
The child then tells the man holding him that he found a cat in the field, to which the rescuer replies, “Oh my goodness! How cool, huh?”:
The sheriff’s office said the child was not hurt during the ordeal and had wandered about half a mile from his home.
“Instances like these highlight the importance of technology and collaboration amongst law enforcement in our community,” the agency noted. “Without the use of the thermal imaging drone, it would likely have taken deputies and other first responders hours to search the entire cornfield, and the outcome may have been different.”
Additional video footage shows just how tall the corn is where the child was found:
A police official told NBC 26 that the rescue was performed in less than an hour, thanks to the drone, which “enabled us to keep the search area a little bit smaller and, in this situation, luckily, helped us find that young man.”