‘Gives me a hug’: Family friend who got off work early finds missing 3-year-old boy

By Kolby Terrell

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    TRIBBEY, Oklahoma (KOCO) — Fifteen minutes proved to be pivotal after a nearly 15-hour search for a 3-year-old boy who went missing Thursday evening in Pottawatomie County.

During those 15 hours, 3-year-old Walker was wandering somewhere in the trees near Tribbey. More than 100 first responders were out from 7:30 p.m. on Thursday until Friday morning searching for Walker, but one man who joined in Friday morning became the family’s hero.

“I got off work early. A friend of the family called up and said, ‘Hey, we’re missing my nephew. Can you come help?’ I said, ‘I got off early. I’m on my way,'” Justin Black said.

Almost 15 hours into the search for the 3-year-old boy, Black used a previous search and rescue job to make a difference.

“We got a thousand people here that are all scanning out, so I said, ‘Well, with the water and rain, I’m just going to search on the outside and start looking for tracks,'” Black said. “I went down. I started looking for drainages.”

And his search didn’t take long.

“Fifteen minutes,” Black said about the length of his search.

In that time, he found Walker walking around.

“Cheery as could be,” Black said. “Just kind of started reaching out towards me and walked to the road, and someone was driving by the road on the side-by-side and picked us up.”

He held the little boy and took him back to his parents.

“And then grandma comes over and gives me a hug and starts getting me teared up,” Black said.

Black told KOCO 5 that he’d never had experience with looking for children like this, but he previous was part of a search-and-rescue team in Denver.

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