Missing six-year-old boy in Melbourne’s east found by bike rider

ABC NEWS (Australia)

A six-year-old boy who spent the night missing in the Dandenong Ranges in Melbourne's outer east has been found safe and well. Police say a mountain bike rider found the child this morning.

Transcript

00:00This has been hailed as an Easter miracle. Some good news but it started off as every family's

00:07worst nightmare. That six-year-old boy, his name is Pasa, he lives with autism and is non-verbal

00:12and he was celebrating Easter or Good Friday with his family yesterday afternoon at about

00:17four o'clock in this play space behind me. We're in an area about 30 kilometres to the

00:21east of Melbourne, quite a rugged mountain area popular with a lot of tourists. It was

00:27about four o'clock yesterday afternoon when his family noticed that Pasa had wandered off.

00:31There was a frantic search and when they couldn't locate him they raised the alarm and got in touch

00:35with police and that prompted an even larger search effort. There was something like 200 people

00:40combing through this area yesterday or last night as night fell. Volunteers from the SES, local police,

00:47the country fire authority, police were even driving through the area with their windows down playing a

00:52song that they knew that Pasa liked in an attempt to lure him out but of course one of the difficulties

00:58they were having is that because he was non-verbal he couldn't necessarily communicate back with the

01:03search crews. Now finally there was an amazing turn of fate at about eight o'clock this morning when

01:08as you say a mountain bike rider, a local teenager, was riding on a mountain bike track about eight

01:13kilometres away from here and came across that young boy who spoke to reporters earlier today

01:17and said he knew instantly that it was Pasa who'd been missing. He was fairly calm. He was

01:24really tired. Obviously a long night just sitting on the ground. Yeah tired. He can't talk very much

01:34obviously but he I think he's talking about werewolves a bit so he's a bit freaked out. Now Melbourne is

01:41experiencing a bit of a warm spell at the moment and this is generally quite a cold area in autumn.

01:46The temperatures did only dip down to about 14 or 15 degrees at about 9pm last night and actually got

01:51warmer through the night so that probably would have been alleviating the concerns of some of the

01:55search teams who were out here through the night. The police addressed the media earlier as well and

02:00said when they came across the boy he was basically in perfect condition with as they've said not a scratch

02:05on him. A huge rollercoaster of emotions but obviously it's it's ended with such an incredible

02:11story. He was found with not a scratch on him, reunited with mum and was just so happy to be with

02:19them. I think he just curled up in a ball and went to sleep straight away with mum.

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