A baby was found crawling in a ditch along a Louisiana highway a day after his older brother was found dead. The mother of the two children has been arrested, and charged with failure to report a missing child.
The Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office said the 1-year-old was crawling next to Interstate 10 near the Pelican State’s border with Texas and was found by a trucker on Tuesday a day after his 4-year-old brother’s body was found in a body of water near a welcome center in Vinton, Louisiana.
Reginald Walton was the trucker who found the baby, telling KADN he saw something to the right, over in the … embankment,”
“But as I was passing by, I saw it move, and I say, ‘Hey, that looks like a baby,’” Walton said.
He was going between 60 and 75 mph, taking about a quarter mile to stop as he called 911 and then ran back to the child.
“Sure enough, there was a little boy sitting down on the embankment there. As I approached him, he smiled at me, and then he stood up and started crying and walked toward me,” Walton told KADN.
The location where the child was found was about 9 miles from the rest stop where his brother was found, CNN reported.
The mother was eventually tracked down hundreds of miles away from where her young children were found.
Aaliya Jack, 25, was arrested a state away, in Meridian, Mississippi.
The sheriff said a coroner in Beaumont, Texas, is still trying to determine the cause of death for the 4-year-old and said that the 1-year-old’s survival was a “miracle.”
The sheriff’s office had been planning a search for the child on Tuesday after the 4-year-old was found dead Monday. During the investigation, law enforcement learned that Jack had last been seen with her children on Saturday, The Associated Press reported.
“It’s amazing that after two days, this 1-year-old kid is crawling around the interstate in a ditch,” Sheriff Gary Guillory said in a news conference, according to The Washington Post. “We refer to him as our miracle baby. It’s a miracle he’s here.”
The boy was placed in the custody of the Louisiana Department of Child and Family Services and was taken to an area hospital to be evaluated. He was found to be in “very good condition.”
“This kid spent two days out in the weather, on the side of the highway. Thank god that trucker (saw) him,” Guillory said. “We’re so thankful for this trucker (who saw) that baby this morning, and immediately pulled over the side of the road and contacted 911.”
The weather Guilloy was referring to was thunderstorms, heavy rain and fog from Hurricane Beryl as the storm made landfall. There were tornados in Texas and Louisiana caused by the storm.
The baby “had quite a few insect bites, but you know what, he was in the ambulance drinking water, sitting up, so he’s in good spirits,” Guillory said, according to the Post.
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