Recently, an 11-year-old boy with intellectual developmental delays from Huaiji County, Zhaoqing, Guangdong, went missing after wandering alone into the deep mountains. After the incident, local authorities quickly launched an emergency search and rescue operation. A team of over a thousand people, including police, firefighters, village officials, and volunteer villagers, conducted continuous relay searches through the mountains. Overcoming challenges such as dense forests, steep slopes, and signal dead zones, they relied on police dog tracking and field traces to tirelessly search the area.
On May 30, rescuers successfully found the missing boy in a remote mountain hollow eight kilometers from his home. Although the child was thin and had scratches on his body, his vital signs were generally stable. The relay of a thousand people and thirteen days of persistence brought the child back safely.
On May 30, rescue team members held the boy in their arms and carried him down the mountain step by step.
Qian Xihui’s home is deep in Anhua Village, Shidong Town, Huaiji County, Zhaoqing. Not long ago, his 11-year-old son, who has intellectual and language disabilities, went missing near their home. At first, the family thought he was just playing nearby as usual, but they waited and he did not appear.
Qian Xihui: I got off work at around 3 a.m. and rushed back. By the time I reached the village entrance, it was already past 7 a.m. and dawn. I hurried to look for him, very anxious, but couldn’t find him. Around 10 a.m., a villager told me the police had already been called.
After receiving the emergency call, the police at Shidong Police Station in Huaiji County immediately reported it, and station chief Mo Wenjie led officers to the scene.
Mo Wenjie: I took the officers into the mountains. I assigned one group to check video surveillance; another group was responsible for interviewing local residents who might know something. His home and the surrounding area had no surveillance cameras, and the location where he disappeared was in the mountains, which cover over 7,000 acres of very dense vegetation.
Without surveillance, without witnesses, in the deep mountains and dense forests with heavy rain, finding a child who cannot communicate normally was very difficult. The command center determined from local interviews that the child likely did not come down the mountain but instead went deeper into the forest. The search team decided to expand outward from the child’s home into the deep mountains.
A massive relay search involving a thousand people was fully launched deep in the mountains.
Mo Wenjie: The villagers told me there are no large wild animals in the mountains, and venomous snakes are rare. So I immediately ruled out the possibility of a wild animal attack. Also, this child occasionally goes up the mountain and knows some basic survival skills.
Days passed… For an 11-year-old special needs child, every extra second alone in the deep mountains increased the danger. Rain clouds hung over the forest and weighed heavily on Qian Xihui and his wife’s hearts.
A breakthrough came on May 29 when a villager gathering herbs found a dirty pair of pants on a remote mountain road about eight kilometers from the child’s home.
Anhua Village Party Branch Secretary and Village Committee Director Qian Dajia: Because the whole village and the police were all searching the mountains for the child, this uncle went into the mountains to find herbs that day. He discovered the child’s pants and came out to notify his parents and the police at the scene to investigate.
Qian Xihui and his wife identified the pants as their son’s. Provincial and municipal police deployed via video conference to conduct a grid search of four to five square kilometers centered on where the pants were found.
Police dog “Zhuifeng” picking up the missing child’s scent
Guo Zhiheng from the police dog unit of the Huaiji County Public Security Bureau’s Criminal Investigation
