They found him in a bush in the Australian bush, drinking water from a stream and eating berries. Alone, at three years old. It could have been a tragedy, but Anthony Elfalak’s is a story that has had its happy ending. Or a miracle, depending on your point of view. The child, who suffers from autism and cannot speak, had disappeared from home last Friday: the family and law enforcement, fearing a kidnapping, had begun to search rural areas of New South Wales.
After three days of searching, the turning point: the boy was spotted by a police helicopter just five hundred meters from his home, on his family’s land in the village of Putty, 112 kilometers north of Sydney. The police reported that the child had his clothes completely wet from the water of the stream and that he was suffering from slight abrasions on his leg, but that, all in all, he was fine. “It was a miracle,” said the little boy’s father, overwhelmed by emotions. “He was pinched by some ants, fell and rolled in the bush, but he’s alive. Is alive”. The searches, which went on day and night for more than three days, involved over one hundred policemen and volunteers: even Prime Minister Scott Morrison expressed in a tweet his satisfaction with the discovery of little Anthony.
It is not clear how the child may have moved away: according to the family, on Friday he would have stayed at home to play, without moving away from his mother. Then, suddenly, the disappearance. Investigative sources reveal that the police are investigating a white vehicle, found not far from the Elfalak estate. The hypothesis being examined by the investigators is that of a kidnapping.