T-shirt and diaper lead man to find missing 5-year-old in MA stream. ‘Guardian angel’
Jake Manna was installing solar panels at a customer’s home in Massachusetts when he heard chatter from the street.
People in the Buttermilk Bay neighborhood were searching for a 5-year-old girl who has autism, according to a news release from the Plymouth Police Department.
The girl had been missing for about 15 minutes on Wednesday, July 13, before Manna heard her mother desperately asking people in the area if they had seen her, he told The Washington Post.
Manna stopped his work and started searching, too, according to police. He wasn’t familiar with the area and walked down a rural trail that led to a stream.
There, Manna found a t-shirt and a diaper floating in the water, which sent him into a panic, according to the release.
“My heart dropped,” he told The Washington Post.
Manna rushed down the stream, which led to a marsh, and found the girl waist-deep in water, according to the release. After he called out to her, the child moved farther into the water.
“It was a real muddy marsh — my feet started sinking into the bottom like [it was] quicksand,” he told The Washington Post. “When I reached her, I picked her up by the armpits, held her as high as I could and brought her back to land.”
Manna was honored with a certificate for his heroic actions, according to the police department.
“If he didn’t pick that path and see the missing clothing, we hate to think about what the outcome would have been,” police said in the release.
More than a thousand people had commented on the police department’s Facebook page thanking Manna and celebrating his willingness to help look for the girl as of Monday afternoon, July 25.
“That girl had a guardian angel ... and his name was Jake,” responding officer Vinnie Roth said in the release.
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