Reporter Covering Missing Kids Ends Up Finding Them

A Pennsylvania newspaper reporter covering the disappearance of two young brothers ended up being the one to find them this week, the AP reports. The boys, ages 7 and 9, never got on their school bus Tuesday morning in Boalsburg, and police launched a search. About 90 minutes later, the Centre Daily Times' Shawn Annarelli was walking past a wooded area on the way to find a sergeant or lieutenant to talk to when he heard rustling and whispering, he writes in the newspaper. After going to investigate the sounds, he spotted the boys squatting under a blueberry bush and heard the older brother say, "They found us." The boys were only 50 yards from their house.

"All I wished in that moment was that the boys wouldn’t run from me. If they bolted, there was only one direction to go—toward Earlystown Road," Annarelli writes in the Daily Times in a first-person account. They didn't, Annarelli called 911, and police escorted the boys home. It turns out the brothers were just trying to play hooky. "[The boys] didn't want to go to school today," a police lieutenant tells the AP. Annarelli concludes his account with a personal note: "I want to say I’m thankful that we are part of a community where police and neighbors actively looked for the boys," he writes. "This is the kind of place I like to call home." (A TV reporter in Florida had a similar experience on a missing-boy story.)