Massive Police Hunt For Missing Three-Year-Old Boy Ends In Joy. Guess Where He Was?

Massive Police Hunt For Missing Three-Year-Old Boy Ends In Joy. Guess Where He Was?
|
Open Image Modal
SWNS

Mum Becky Gumm suffered every parent's worst nightmare when her three-year-old son went missing.

She searched high and low for him until, after the longest hour of her life, she called 999.

Within minutes, 30 police officers flooded her neighbourhood in St Neots, Cambridgeshire, and a helicopter was scrambled to join in the search.

And then, just as Becky's stress levels had soared off the scale, little Jaden was found – in a kitchen cupboard, where he had gone for a snooze after watching Fireman Sam.

You can only imagine the relief, can't you?

Incredibly, mum-of-seven Becky, 32, had already looked in the cupboard once - but Jaden had snuggled under a pile of carrier bags and she hadn't spotted him.

Becky said: "I didn't quite believe that he had been under the kitchen sink asleep for three hours - he never sits still for that long.

"I was shocked and very tearful - I still am a bit - but I'm getting there."

Jaden went missing at about 3pm last Friday. Becky said she was upstairs with another child as the three-year-old played downstairs and watched Fireman Sam.

Describing the heart-stopping moment she walked back into the living room and he was nowhere to be seen, she said: "When I asked where he was, Charlie, my four-year-old, held my hand and took me to the front door - I thought he had gone out. It was just so horrible.

"I looked everywhere around the house that I could think of and I double-checked everywhere.

"I phoned my mum to see if he had walked up to hers and she said 'no'. I was going out of my head and thinking all sorts.

"I thought: Is he in the house or has someone taken him? 'Will we ever see him again', especially with the brook so close?"

Becky desperately searched for Jaden for about an hour with her husband Andy, 48, her children, neighbours and friends before she alerted police.

In fact, she was talking to police in her kitchen when she checked her cupboard under the sink and made the 'fantastic' find.

She said: "I still can hardly believe what we all went through. I didn't want to take Jaden to nursery on Monday but I knew that if I didn't, I never would.

"The children were all brilliant. They were so relieved when we finally found him and they had their tears as well."

A Cambridgeshire Police spokesman said: "Our priority is always to protect and safeguard vulnerable people. We put a lot of resources into the search due to the potential risk to such a young child who was thought to have wandered out of his home.

"We were delighted to find him safe and well and reunite him with his concerned family."