After a 17-year-old boy with autism went missing on Friday in Egg Harbor Township in South Jersey, police searched relentlessly for him, including in treacherous conditions. <\/p>\n
Bodycam video exclusively shared with NBC10 showed the moments officer found the teen nearly 36 hours after his disappearance in the middle of dense woods. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was truly amazing. We found him. He\u2019s alive. He\u2019s okay,” said Capt. Michael Finnerty, of the Egg Harbor Township Police Department.<\/p>\n
The disappearance quickly set off an intense search, with local police quickly accepting help from state and federal agencies, as well as volunteers. <\/p>\n
“We wanted to leave no stone unturned, and we end up doing that for 35 plus hours,” Finnerty said. <\/p>\n
On Sunday morning, the search finally made a turning point when officials began using aerial infrared imaging technology provided a breakthrough searchers needed. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a heat source that looked like someone sitting up against a tree, you know,” Finnerty said. “Almost cold and holding his knees.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the bodycam video, the teen can be heard saying “I can’t find my mom and dad.” <\/p>\n
“We\u2019re going to find them for you,” the officer responded. <\/p>\n
Officers had to make their way through very thick brush and really rugged terrain to get to the teen and then bring him out of the woods. And remember, they were also dealing with darkness.<\/p>\n
\u201cPockets of water, swampy areas, thickets\u2026you can\u2019t hardly get through,” said Egg Harbor Township Police Chief Fred Spano. <\/p>\n
But the officers were able to get to the teen and bring him to the nearest road for an emotional reunion with his loved ones. <\/p>\n
\u201cFor anyone involved in this, this was a kind of one of those cases that you’ll remember, you, long after you retire,” Spano said. <\/p>\n
The teen was checked out at a hospital, but he is okay. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a 17-year-old boy with autism went missing on Friday in Egg Harbor Township in South Jersey, police…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70,8091],"class_list":["post-147771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-south-jersey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}