A 14-year-old boy who has autism is now reunited with his family after being rescued near Proud Lake in Commerce Township.
The 14-year-old boy is from Farmington Hills. He was a part of a church group that was camping at the Proud Lake Recreation Area. The group went hiking and that’s when the boy ran off and was missing for hours.
“We activated a lot of resources, our search and rescue, our marine division, aviation,” said Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard.
Sheriff Bouchard says at around 4 pm on Tuesday, his team started getting calls that a 14-year-old boy with autism was missing. They were also told he was attracted to water.
“We’ve had a lot of drownings this year, we’ve already had 11, we were very fearful that this was going to be number 12,” said Bouchard.
Sheriff Bouchard says at around 7 pm, the search and rescue team found the boy.
“Thank heavens our aviation unit got there quickly, they got there within 6 minutes and began a pattern search, they actually found him about a mile, 1.3 miles away from where he had left the group,” Bouchard added.