Fearing Kidnapping, Brennan Hawkins, lost for four days in the Utah mountains, hid from searchers. :: World's Largest Prayer Board Annointed.net News :: Your Prayer Request will be seen by thousands on this Prayer Board

Fearing Kidnapping, Brennan Hawkins, lost for four days in the Utah mountains, hid from searchers.

Posted by: Shawn on Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - 01:21 PM

Click here to read the rest of the story and to post your comments.

Fearing Kidnapping, Brennan Hawkins, lost for four days in the Utah mountains, hid from searchers.

BOUNTIFUL, Utah - The 11-year-old boy lost for four days in the Utah mountains had deliberately hid from searchers, thinking they were strangers who might kidnap him, his mother said Wednesday.

"His biggest fear, he told me, was that someone would steal him," Jody Hawkins said of her son Brennan, who was rescued Tuesday afternoon by a searcher who came across the boy before he could hide.

He had two things on his mind, she added, "stay on the trail and don't talk to strangers," she added at a press conference outside their home in Bountiful, Utah. As a result, she said, he would walk along a trail but then hide when someone approached.

His father, Toby, said they had never talked with Brennan about how that stranger rule shouldn't apply if he got lost. "This may have come to a faster conclusion had we discussed that," he said.

Forrest Nunley, the man who found Brennan, echoed that version of events, telling NBC's "Today" show earlier that Brennan "had been hiding" in some trees from other searchers on horseback and that, when offered water, "he was a little bit worried about whether he could have the water or not."

Bob Hawkins, Brennan's uncle, told "Today" that he had been taught the idea of "stranger danger" and that "all of that kind of kicked in. ... he was just going on that instinct."

Brennan vanished last Friday evening after playing at a climbing wall at a Boy Scout camp where he had been camping with a friend and his friend's family.

Sheriff Dave Edmunds told "Today" that Brennan apparently "was taught not to talk to strangers" and must have been hiding during the search since "so many people" had been in the area looking.

Rain, snow overnight
The search itself, he added, "was getting pretty grim" and had Brennan not been found "it would have been very difficult to survive last night" since it rained and snowed in the area after several days of warm weather.

Nunley, the volunteer searcher who found Brennan, told "Today" that he thought he might be seeing a mirage or his mind was playing tricks on him when he turned a corner in his ATV and "he was standing in the middle of the road."

"I was amazed that he was alive," Nunley added, describing it as "an out-of-this-world experience."

Nunley, who had been following search crews on horses, said Tuesday that Brennan "said he saw the horses but was scared of the people, didn't want to come out because he didn't know if they were scary people."

One of the men on horseback echoed that view. "We asked him why he didn't holler," Stephen Johnson told the Salt Lake City Tribune. ''He said, 'Because you're strangers.'''

Five miles from camp
Brennan was found in an area that officials hadn't made a priority because it was uphill from the Boy Scout camp.

“Typically children walk downhill, along the path of least resistance,” Edmunds said Tuesday.

The search was concentrated into the lower areas, but Brennan had hiked some 600 feet higher and more than five miles into the mountains when Nunley found him before noon Thursday.

“He was all muddy and wet,” from walking over the saturated ground, said Nunley, who dialed 911 on his cell phone and said he was lucky to find a signal.

After downing bottles of water and eating all the granola bars carried by a group of volunteer searchers, the boy asked to play a video game on one rescuer’s cell phone, the sheriff said.

Mom: 'Prayers are answered'
The youngster from the Salt Lake City suburb of Bountiful was found on a 9,400-foot pass above Lily Lake, a summer-only campground on the Uinta mountain range. He was quickly reunited with his parents and their four other children.

“People say that the heavens are closed and God no longer answers prayers. We are here to unequivocally tell you that the heavens are not closed, prayers are answered and children come home,” the boy’s mother, Jody Hawkins, said.

The boy and his family rode in an ambulance together to Primary Children’s Medical Center in Salt Lake City. “He laughed on the way here, just like he always has,” his mother said.

In Bountiful, an impromptu celebration was held Tuesday on the Hawkins family’s front lawn.

“This is a miracle. This is how it should happen,” neighbor Kristie Swain said. She and her husband, Mark, spent Sunday and Monday in the mountains helping search for Brennan.

“It shows that you don’t give up. You just cannot give up,” she said.

Neighbors and school children tied celebratory yellow ribbons to every part of the Hawkins’ yard, the family’s boat, and trees surrounding the home.

If neighbors didn’t have any ribbon, they honked car horns or held up signs heralding Brennan’s safe return.

'No mood' for details
It was not yet known how the boy spent his four nights in the woods, or whether he had been trying to find his way back to camp. “He was in no mood to give us some details,” the sheriff said. “He just wanted to eat and see his mom.”

A friend of Brennan's who spoke with him Tuesday night told KSL Newsradio in Salt Lake City that Brennan said he got lost when he took a different route and left the trail. Brennan said he slept a lot, pulled his sweatshirt over his legs to keep warm, and tried to think of other things besides being lost, the friend said.

The boy carried no food or water when he vanished Friday, and his family had said he did not have a good sense of direction.

The boy’s safe rescue on a rocky, narrow ATV trail ended a massive search that included a platoon of all-terrain vehicles, horses and helicopters, including some armed with infrared devices.

“Words cannot express the appreciation that we feel for all that have done so much,” read a message on the family’s Web site. “He was worth everyone’s efforts and everyone’s prayers — you will always be in our prayers.”

Officials said Brennan disappeared somewhere along a dirt road between the Scout camp’s artificial climbing wall and the “chow hall,” where he was to meet a friend.

Kay Godfrey, a spokeswoman for the Boy Scouts’ Great Salt Lake Council, pronounced the boy’s rescue a “modern-day miracle.”

During the search, rescuers had feared the boy had fallen into a river that was swollen by heavy snow melt. Deep-water rescue teams searched the river, while others combed the rugged area around it.

Among the volunteer searchers was Kevin Bardsley, whose 12-year-old son, Garrett, vanished last August while camping at a nearby lake. He was never found despite a weeklong search.

"When we came off this mountain in the winter, my friends and I decided right then, if anyone came missing, we'd be there immediately," Bardsley said.

Click here to read the rest of the story and to post your comments.