| Cañon City search for 8 year-old boy | ||
| May 31, 2006 Out of the Woods Evan Thompson, 8, clung to his aunt, Teddi Gray, and a toy dog he received from the rescue team after he was found unhurt Tuesday afternoon in the Cactus Cliff area on Shelf Road between Cañon City and Cripple Creek. Evan had been missing since early Saturday when he wandered off while on a camping trip with his foster parents. By BOBBI SANKEY THE GAZETTE CAÑON CITY - He was exhausted and couldn’t wait to get his hands on a slice of pizza — but 8-year-old Evan Thompson was alive Tuesday afternoon, after wandering lost in the forest for 3½ days. An ATV rescue crew discovered the Lakewood boy around 4:20 p.m., near Hole in the Wall Gulch, about 5 miles from the campsite he wandered from Saturday morning, according to Zak Slutzky of Gunnison’s Western State Mountain Rescue. It was his first camping trip. When searchers found him, Evan said he was hungry and wanted some soda, Slutzky said. Other than being hungry, thirsty and tired, he survived the ordeal without serious injury. It took workers more than an hour to bring Evan out from the rugged terrain to the rescue crew staging area, where he was reunited with Teddi Gray, his aunt and legal guardian, and her husband, Arthur. Gray profusely thanked rescue workers Tuesday afternoon, once the family made its way down from the staging area. “We are overjoyed and overwhelmed to have Evan back with us,” she said. Evan, wearing a hooded sweat shirt and looking weary, clutched a stuffed animal rescue crews gave him and wrapped his arms tightly about his aunt’s neck. The mild weather over the past several days gave rescuers confidence Evan was still alive as they continued searching. Laurie Clark, Evan’s guardian ad litem, said Evan told the family he slept in a tree one night and on a rock another night. He didn’t understand why his aunt burst into tears and hugged him when the ATV crew brought him in, not realizing how worried people had been, according to Clark. “They’re just so happy he’s OK, he’s healthy,” she said. Several hundred people from 20 rescue crews from around Colorado had been searching for Thompson since Saturday. He disappeared around 9:30 a.m. in the Cactus Cliff area on Shelf Road, between Cañon City and Cripple Creek — an area lined with steep limestone cliffs. Tad McClurg of El Paso County’s Search and Rescue Crew spent Sunday searching for the boy, to no avail. “We’ve had some of the best trackers in the state here,” he said. “They kept finding prints, even though (Evan) wasn’t answering calls.” Crews followed the boy’s footprints northwest from the campsite and concentrated their search in a 15-squaremile area. Slutzky didn’t know how the ATV crew discovered the boy as they scoured the hazardous terrain. “He looks phenomenal. You wouldn’t believe he was out in the woods that long,” Slutzky said. Steve Wilson of Evergreen’s Alpine Rescue Team spent Monday searching for the boy. Crews combed the woods, looked for footprints and checked the sides of cliffs as high as 80 or 90 feet, he said. “It was successful in that we eliminated a lot of areas,” he said of Monday’s search effort. Crews hunted for the lost boy from sunrise to sunset. “They figured it was time to rest everyone, get some rest and hot meals, and that obviously paid off,” Wilson said. The boy was taken to St. Thomas More hospital in Cañon City on Tuesday afternoon. Hospital spokeswoman Jennifer Kemp said he arrived in good condition, was treated for minor injuries and released. Slutzky said search crews and Evan’s relatives remained optimistic throughout the search and had no intention of calling it off. “It’s always phenomenal when we’re able to find someone like this — we never gave up hope,” he said. CONTACT THE WRITER: 476-4813 or bobbi.sankey@gazette.com |
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