A one-year-old boy survived two days of stormy weather alone on a Louisiana highway until a trucker found him crawling along the road. His four-year-old brother was discovered dead nearby a day earlier.
The baby, despite being covered in bug bites, was unharmed. Authorities arrested the boys’ mother, Aaliyah Jack, 25, on Tuesday in Mississippi, about 350 miles from where the children were found, according to the New York Post.
“We look at this 1-year-old as our miracle baby because he was still alive,” Calcasieu Parish Sheriff Gary “Stitch” Guillory told reporters at a news conference in Lake Charles, about 200 miles west of New Orleans.
“This kid spent two days out in the weather on the side of the highway,” the sheriff said, emotion visibly registering on his face. “Thank God that trucker seen him.”
Amid high winds and rainfall from Hurricane Beryl, the body of the four-year-old boy was discovered in a lake behind a welcome center on Interstate 10, near the Texas border, on Monday. Autopsy reports are pending.
Authorities, investigating the child’s death, learned he was last seen on Saturday with his mother, Jack, and his one-year-old sibling. Fearing the baby had also drowned, police were preparing to search the lake when a trucker spotted the baby crawling along the highway and called 911.
A law enforcement alert for Jack was issued Monday night, and she was arrested in Meridian, Mississippi, on charges of failure to report a missing child.
“She was located in Mississippi, without the 1-year-old, by the Meridian Police Department and taken into custody,” the Calcasieu Sheriff’s Office said. “When deputies arrived, they were able to positively identify the child as the missing 1-year-old,” the sheriff’s office said in a press release.
Jack will be extradited to Louisiana and held on a $300,000 bond, the Post reported on Thursday. It was not clear at the time if she had retained a lawyer.
