Missing Boy Scout Found Alive
Rescue Dog Led Searchers To Boy Stranded 3 Days In N.C. Mountains
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Play CBS Video Video Missing Boy Scout Found Michael Auberry, the Boy Scout who has been in absentia for three days since he wandered away from his camp in the rugged mountains of North Carolina, has been found. Mark Strassmann reports.
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Video Missing Boy Scout Found Alive A 12-year-old Boy Scout who was missing in the wilderness of North Carolina has been found alive. Karen Brown reports.
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Video Park Ranger Elated Over Rescue CBS News RAW: National Park Service spokesperson Tina White announces that a Boy Scout missing in the North Carolina woods has been found alive.
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In this image taken from video, Misha Marshall, partially out of frame, holds her dog Gandalf in McGrady, N.C., on March 20, 2007. Gandalf picked up missing boy scout Michael Auberry's scent less than a mile from the campsite where he had wandered away from his troop on Saturday. (AP)
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Missing Boy Scout Michael Auberry was found on March 20, 2007. He had been missing since Saturday. (AP Photo)
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National Park Service spokeswoman Tina White. (CBS)
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A group of searchers, mostly Boy Scout leaders, come off the trail after searching Monday evening March 19, 2007, in the Doughton Park area of Wilkes County, near McGrady, N.C. (AP)
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An unidentified volunteer takes a break, March 19, 2007, while waiting to rejoin the search for missing Boy Scout Michael Auberry in Wilkes County, N.C. The boy was found a day later. (AP)
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Photo Essay Boy Scout Found Rescue dog leads searchers to 12-year-old boy found safe after wandering away from camp four days earlier.
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Interactive Out Of Sight: Missing Kids Get the facts on kidnappings, learn predator profiles and check out resources for locating missing children.
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Photo Essay Search For A Scout Brennan Hawkins is found alive after vanishing from a Boy Scout camp in Utah.
Michael Auberry was found on the side of a ridge, just half a mile north of the original campsite where he walked away on Saturday, reports CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann.
"He was a little disoriented, but he was great," said Misha Marshall, the South Carolina Search and Rescue Dog Association volunteer whose dog, Gandalf, found Michael Auberry on a wooded ridge.
"He just said, 'I'm hungry,"' Marshall said. And he wanted some water.
Michael was so tired that once he was rescued he slept on a canvass stretcher for nearly 45 minutes as rescuers carried him down the mountain, adds Strassmann.
"There are a lot of smiling people standing around me here at the command post, and a lot of rescuers and folks who are very pleased to hear this news," National Park Service spokeswoman Tina White told CBS News' Karyn Regal a few minutes later. "We were focusing more heavily on the 35 different segments of the area where we thought he had the highest probability of being, and maybe that's what paid off."
Joe Ware, Assistant Fire Chief in McGrady, said the boy told the rescue team that picked him up and Marshall up on a nearby road that he had been drinking some water out of the streams in the area.
"He was calm," though a bit disoriented as he talked to the rescuers, Ware said. "He wanted peanut butter crackers and water."
Ware said he checked him for injuries, then he and the other rescuers carried the boy into a ranger station, where a medical team and his parents met him. He was later taken by ambulance to a hospital.
The radio communication from the search team that found the boy set off a celebration among leaders of several Scout troops waiting for news about the boy. "A lot of tears, a lot of hugs," White said, and members of Michael's church joined hands to pray at the staging area.
"This shows that when everybody works together, good things happen," said associate minister Susan Norman Vickers of Christ United Methodist Church. "We just believed that he was going to be found."
Earlier, the boy's father talked about his confidence in the rescue teams searching for his son in the damp, cool wilderness.
"What we got here is our son, who's lost, lost somewhere out there, and we don't know where he is," Kent Auberry said. "We've got great professionals looking for him. We're just waiting for the news."
Dog teams, about 70 people and a plane with heat-sensing equipment had been searching the rugged area around the camp site. Overnight temperatures were in the upper 30s to low 40s on Tuesday, milder than on Sunday night, when temperatures dropped into the 20s.
Michael vanished after lunch with his fellow Scouts and troop leaders on Saturday. His father said the adults and the other boys on the trip told him Michael had slept late but nothing appeared to have been wrong.
"He was in good spirits," Auberry said. "He ate lunch, chatting with the boys. He was walking around with I think some Pringles and a mess kit. The next moment, sounds like a blink of the eye, he was gone."
Authorities said the boy probably wandered into the woods to explore.
Searchers found Michael's mess kit a few hours after he disappeared and within a mile of the camp site. White said they had also found a candy wrapper and a potato chip bag.
While the weather has been chilly, White said Michael was wearing two jackets, one of them fleece.
As a Scout, Michael had had some wilderness training. His father also talked about one of Michael's favorite books when he was younger, a story about a boy whose plane crashes in the wilderness, and how the boy survives on his own.
"I think he's got some of that book in his mind," Kent Auberry said. "They do a great job in the Scouts of educating the kids of what to beware of and tips. I'm hopeful that Michael has taken those to heart."
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Michelle Obama tells how her role as the First Lady has changed her perspective.
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See all 86 CommentsPosted by dog-x8 at 11:36 PM : Mar 20, 2007"
"Overprotective" is BEST!
Let the others under protect their children if they wish, you had the right attitude.
Safety first.
Children should NEVER be left alone.
And these days, even some parents are a danger to the children.
I hope you never are around a mental challenged child.
The child has some mental deficiencies but they aren't so bad that he can't learn. He just learns slower then others. That was reported in the news. That's most likely why he didn't think to turn around to go back to camp. They said he got homesick for his Dad and thought he could just go find him.
ToolIMangler
I don't see where in my comments that I said that people should be 'Implanted with RFID '. What I said was they could wear ' Braclets ' and I'm sure those can be taken off when a trip is over.
Was thinking the same thing. Surprised we haven't had such a simple device as yet. We have them for birds and the like. LOL
Give them an ankle or wrist bracelet and turn them loose. LOL
There you go!
The adults in charge were incompetents who must shoulder full responsibility for the scare.
Posted by bjbbc2004 at 03:17 PM : Mar 20, 2007"
That is why there shouldn't be 'air head' adults tending the children.
No child should be able to wonder off with no one noticing. They should have been buddied up twos and threes; no one make a step without the other one noticing and following close behind and objecting.
Ironic? Not really. Like most of the people on this board, victims and their parents do not accept or conceive of the banality of evil. That it is everyday and common--but molestation is often a crime of opportunity and for child molesters to be so successfulm they often depend on ordinary people refusing to speculate or entertain the ugly--that way, those same parents will offer their own childen up with loving, trusting, albeit naive hands.
Posted by dogsoul at 04:59 PM : Mar 20, 2007
I have to agree that those who work closely with abuse do see and suspect it more and it does tend to make them more suspicious and cynical. I would also submit that the majority of people don't like to hear bad news or even entertain it--and by insisting it is unfair to debate a salient argument about this case--we paint it in even uglier colors than it probably is. No wonder kids are afraid to tell most of the time--those who do not want to know or want to protect the adult's (and by extension and extrapolation their own) reputations see even the speculation of what occurred as a threat. "THAT WHICH MUST NOT BE SAID"
As for the scout leader, he has nothing to fear, including beschmirching of his reputation. I sarted by saying what MAY have occurred--the word may is a qualifier, I have also contended it may not have. No facts are changed by reticence of debate. It MAY have occurred, it MAY not have--but due to the actions of both, and regardless of blog sentiment--there WILL be speculation and discretion will be used as they look into it. Adults can accept this, debate it and move on.
Posted by dogsoul at 04:59 PM : Mar 20, 2007
What the real kicker is, is that over time, social workers develope almost a 6th sense when stories have holes or something is just not kosher and though they may not be right 100% they come pretty close. At the end of the day, most social workers believe an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure--or that they would prefer to err on the side of the child.
As for speculation, it is the stuff which drives the engine of dicovery and for those who do not relish it or condemn it, keep your actions obove reproach and speculation will be at a minimum.
The scout adult did not follow protocol and scout mandates in staying alone with the child --FIRST RED FLAG
The boy did not follow protocol and scout mandates that each person be with a buddy at all times and NEVER wander off alone---SECOND RED FLAG
In the face of such anomalies--speculation will certainly exist--but trust me, there are probably very few people who would want the child to be proven to be molested--in fact, the police and social workers and everyone else will go in with fingers crossed, hoping for the all too rare Norman Rockwellian version of events--unfortunately, it often does not happen.
Posted by Robjk1 at 06:36 PM : Mar 20, 2007
true--but please...he wandered, not "wondered" to wander is to travel aimlessly in any direction. to wonder is to think about something...to speculate. Like I wonder if that adult realized they were not following scout procedure when they stayed alone with the boy.
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