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A missing 2-year-old boy wearing nothing but a diaper was discovered curled up in a ditch in the frigid Michigan woods with the help of a police chopper equipped with a heat-seeking camera, dramatic video of the rescue shows.

Michigan State Police helicopters located the boy from the air around 11:30 p.m. Sunday — about three hours after he had gone missing — just feet from busy Interstate 94 in Blackman Township.

The boy was found lying in the fetal position as temperatures hovered just above freezing.


  Officers could be seen comforting the child through the infrared cameras after he was found. Michigan State Police Officers could be seen comforting the child through the infrared cameras after he was found. Michigan State Police

  The child was found lying down in a ditch not far from the interstate. Michigan State Police The child was found lying down in a ditch not far from the interstate. Michigan State Police

  “We got him,” one officer says in the video. Michigan State Police “We got him,” one officer says in the video. Michigan State Police

Initially uncertain if the heat signal was the missing child or an animal, officers on the ground were seen in the infrared footage following lioghts being flashed from the chopper directing them to the figure in the darkness.

“We got him,” one of the searchers then said triumphantly.

Several officers could be seen comforting the child, who was not publicly identified, as they waited for an ambulance to arrive.

“Although the child was cold, he was alert and conscious,” The Blackman-Leoni Department of Public Safety said in a statement.

The toddler was last seen watching television in the living room of his family’s home in Blackman Township — about 77 miles west of Detroit — around 8:45 p.m. on Sunday and his parents reported him missing to authorities an hour later.

The child was rushed to Henry Ford Jackson Hospital where after an evaluation was determined to be in good condition.

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