A Florida police K-9 is being hailed as a hero after helping find a missing 3-year-old boy who wandered from his home Friday, authorities said.
According to the DeLand Police Department, the toddler’s family reported him missing from their home around 11:30 a.m., and authorities immediately set up a team to search for the toddler.
Officers conducted an extensive search for the missing boy, focusing on a wooded area behind the family’s home.
K-9 Midnight and his handler, Corporal, are trained to search for drugs and missing persons. Damon Clark is asked to help search for a missing boy.
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K-9 Midnight and Corporal. On Friday, Clark was asked to help search for the boy after he wandered from his home in DeLand, Florida. (DeLand Police Department)
Officials said Midnight used the boy’s blanket to smell the child and followed him into the woods.
K-9 Midnight used the boy’s blanket to sniff him and tracked him through the woods behind the house. (DeLand Police Department)
Midnight and Clark follow the footsteps and find the boy in the woods. According to police, the boy was not injured and was safely returned to his family.
K-9 Clark and other officers pose for a photo at midnight with the boy and his mother who were reunited Friday. (DeLand Police Department)
“Thank you to all the teams involved for your hard work!” police said in a statement. “This is the outcome we want under these circumstances: a safe return!”
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Midnight has been with the DeLand Police Department since 2022. He joins his K-9s at other law enforcement agencies across the country who have recently tracked down missing children and reunited them with their families.
K-9 Midnight has been with the DeLand Police Department since 2022. (DeLand Police Department)
Last month, K-9 Ibiza in Auburn, Massachusetts, tracked and tracked the scent of a missing 12-year-old boy over three miles in the frigid cold.
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In January, Mary Lou, a kindergarten through ninth grade student with the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office in Florida, helped search for an 11-year-old girl who went missing inside a locked park bathroom.
