Katrina Baulch and Sergeant Chris Russo speak to ACM on the rescue of Jack Baulch

The Wimmera Mail-Times

Mother Katrina Baulch and Sergeant Chris Russo of the Halls Gap police station speak to ACM on the rescue of Jack Baulch. The 20-year-old went missing on Wednesday, January 3, after going on a bush walk in Halls Gap.

Transcript

00:00 Yes, so he came to Halls Gap yesterday to go up the pinnacle and he rang me at about

00:05 20 to 4 to say that he was almost at the top and I did suggest that he head down because of the storm and

00:12 then he sent me a video about quarter past 4 and a statement to say that he'd made it up the top and being autistic

00:18 he felt that he had to complete that cycle and make it to the top and

00:22 by 4.30 I couldn't get any access to his phone. It went straight to Message Bank and I just assumed it was out of service

00:29 because I had a Life 360 app that was saying that it was still connected and

00:34 often he'll go out and eat his adventures and come home late at night

00:38 so I wasn't sort of too concerned. Woke up at 2 o'clock and he wasn't home and then

00:42 set the ball rolling with a call to triple zero and yeah one thing led to another and

00:47 lots of people have become involved and we've had thankfully a great outcome after a worrying day.

00:53 Chris, that's where the station sort of got involved in the SDS? Yes, so the first call came in

01:00 as it always does from Concerned Family

01:02 local police, so our police here, we only have a couple of police working at Horsgates, not 24-hour

01:09 so we were called out in the early hours this morning and came out with police from Ararat and Storle and

01:15 that's when we commenced the investigation if you like to try and find Jack

01:20 do our best to do it quickly and

01:23 to do that we get a lot of our colleagues from SES, our internal colleagues from

01:27 the Air Wing, the Search and Rescue Squad all came up

01:31 and yeah exactly what Katrina said, we've had a great outcome tonight, couldn't have hoped for anything better.

01:37 Katrina, how did you feel when you found out that Jack had been found?

01:40 Very relieved, I was actually starting to get concerned that the outcome wasn't going to be a positive one and

01:46 I had a great fear that he wouldn't actually access any water, being autistic he doesn't like any germs and

01:53 that's always a concern of his which he actually did reiterate when we found him that he hadn't touched any water, so very very relieved.

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