Emily Chan
After a boy was found wandering alone along a road in North Carolina, deputies tried a rarely used tactic to track down the boy’s home.
On July 7, the Union County Sheriff’s Office in Monroe, North Carolina, received a 911 call from a passerby that a child was walking on a road in a suburban, residential area by himself.
When officers arrived at Waxhaw Indian Trail Road, they were unable to locate the child’s home or parents because he was autistic and non-verbal. The sheriff’s office decided to call in the K-9 unit consisting of bloodhound Remi and his handler, Deputy B. Belk.
They tried out a “reverse” K-9 track, which, according to Lieutenant Public Information Officer James Maye, was “out of the norm” for a police dog to do. The standard procedure is to track from where a person left to where they currently are. But this time, they carried out the process in reverse.
Belk took a piece of sterile gauze and used it to collect the boy’s scent from his forearms and the back of his neck.
Once Remi got a whiff of the boy’s scent, the bloodhound was able to lead the child back home within 15 minutes, which was approximately a half mile away in a nearby neighborhood.
The child, who was around six years old, was quickly reunited with his family. Upon the deputies’ arrival, the house’s garage door was open. They determined that the boy had snuck out of the house without his parents realizing.
They also found that there were no criminal offenses and gave the family some tips to prevent another incident like that from happening again.
Maye said that Remi is just one-year-old and has been with the department since he was a puppy. He was trained internally by the sheriff’s office canine handler.
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