Police were called to the 100 block of East Broadway Street in Urbana Thursday morning,
A 9-year-old reported he saw “a young child without clothes on walking unsupervised by an adult. The child was observed running through a backyard and toward a nearby tree line, bordering an adjacent field to the east,” Urbana Police Chief Matt Lingrell said in a statement released late Thursday afternoon.
The Urbana Fire Division, Champaign County Sheriff’s Deputies and their K-9, and Union County Sheriff’s Deputies and their drone unit assisted in the search for the child.
The Champaign County Communications Center even issued a “Code Red” alert to that quadrant of the city, asking people to be on the lookout for the child, Lingrell said.
Police searched a three-block area and went door-to-door to verify that houses with children had accounted for them.
Officers then found a diaper on the ground, in a driveway near a cornfield.
They then found a 2-year-old boy who fit the description, at a home on East Broadway Street, and was wearing a fresh diaper that matched the one officers found.
The mother told officers that the child had run away, but returned home before Urbana police arrived.
Champaign County Children’s Services is working with the family.
The incident remains under investigation.
