A Mississippi woman woke up in the middle of the night to discover her worst nightmare — her 2-year-old son was gone.
Chelsea Nobel stirred from her sleep when she sensed that something wasn’t right. She looked over to the other side of the bed where 2-year-old William Odom normally sleeps, but he wasn’t there. Her heart sank as she frantically began to search her home. There was zero trace of the toddler.
Chelsea immediately called the police, and an extensive community search effort began. Neighbors, police on ATVs, K-9 units, and helicopters searched the area which was covered in dense forest, but William was nowhere to be found.
During their search in the woods, authorities spotted a tiny set of footprints in the mud. Trailing nearby was another set of footprints, but these belonged to a dog.
As they searched the woods for hours upon hours, each minute becoming more desperate, a boy named Blake Carroll was coming home from school and heard the horn honk from his uncle’s rundown truck. The 10-year-old peered inside the truck and saw William crying and honking the horn.
The dog, named Jezebel, was circling the truck, trying to get inside. As it turns out, the dog belonged to Chelsea and William. Blake immediately ran to grab his uncle for help. Within moments, the scared 2-year-old was pulled to safety.
It was apparent that Jezebel had stayed by William’s side throughout the hours-long ordeal, keeping a watch on the toddler.
“Every time we found his footprint, we found the dog footprint right beside him. So the dog traveled with him all day,”Harrison County Sheriff Troy Peterson said. “When the little boy was found the dog was still circling the truck and scratching on the truck.”
“He was inside the truck apparently sleeping. His back, when we got him, he had a bunch of stripes on his back that matched up to the seams in the truck. So we’re thinking he was just in the truck sleeping,” Peterson explained.
William was found only wearing a diaper and is mostly non-verbal. He wouldn’t have responded if he heard people calling his name.
It’s a miracle that Blake happened to be walking by the truck at that very moment. After being rescued, William was reunited with his understandably emotional mother. Chelsea, however, was soon pressed by the community as to how William was able to wander off in the first place.
The 21-year-old mother was soon charged with misdemeanor child neglect after the 7-hour-long disappearance of her son. William and his siblings were taken into the custody of the Mississippi Department of Human Services.
Thankfully, William is now safe and unharmed. Chelsea is currently held in the county jail on a $1,500 bond.
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