Real-time data from Symphony PublicVue showing search aircraft flight patterns as they starting their work (top) and then circling at various altitudes during the search. Images courtesy of Alaric Naiman.
A child who went missing in the woods off of Bedford Road Thursday evening prompted an all-hands-on-deck search involving police, firefighters, ATVs, helicopters, and K9 police dogs before he was found.
At about 4:30 p.m. on October 14, Lincoln Public Safety received the call about a missing five-year old boy, and the search began near where he was last seen near the Birches School. Due to privacy issues involving a juvenile, Fire Chief Brian Young and Police Chief Kevin Kennedy declined to say whether the boy was a student at that school, though Kennedy did say he was not a Lincoln resident. Birches School officials did not immediately return calls or emails.
The child reportedly ran away from a group while walking along conservation trails between Red Maple Lane and Flint’s Pond, police said. Due to the large search area, they immediately requested assistance from the Concord and Bedford Police and Fire Departments, as well as from the Northeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council and Massachusetts State Police, who scrambled several helicopters from their air wing with thermal imaging equipment to help locate anyone concealed beneath the tree canopy.
As it turned out, the high-tech and canine capabilities weren’t needed. Police got a 911 call at 5:47 p.m. from a hiker on the trails saying they had found a boy alone in the woods. He was found about 200 yards from the end of Orchard Lane and brought out of the woods by firefighters on an ATV who located the pair using verbal descriptions and the town’s Outerspatial GPS trail-mapping system.
There was a short delay in reuniting the boy with his parents, who were waiting anxiously at a second command post at the deCordova Museum (the other post was on Oak Knoll Road).
Upon emerging, the boy was physically healthy but “very upset” and frightened of the firefighters who brought him out of the woods, Young said.
Online aircraft data showed there were six helicopters circling the area during the search, though at least one of them was a news helicopter. Local TV news stations reported the story that night. The searchers were fortunate that the boy was found before the sun set about 45 minutes later, Young said.
One result of the incident: all the town’s firefighters have now downloaded the Outerspatial app to their phones to help in future cases of people lost in Lincoln’s woods, he said.
“The [hiker] calling 911 was certainly the biggest piece,” Young noted. “When you see something out of place, call 911.”