KEY POINTS

  • The boy was found walking to the parking lot of the gas station  
  • A witness said cars were seen swerving to avoid the child
  • The child's mother had called 911 to report him missing

It's baby's day out literally! Motorists on Alabama's busy Highway 43 bumped into an unlikely pedestrian Wednesday night — a 2-year-old child.

Creola Police Chief Frank Hammond said the boy wandered off from a trailer park, crossed a railroad track and then walked across the busy Highway 43 toward a BP Gas station, CBS-affiliated TV station WKRG reported.

The child was found about 500-1,000 feet from his home located on the other side of the highway. According to witnesses, the child was nearly run over and cars were seen swerving to avoid the baby.

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"I was terrified, everybody in the parking lot was terrified and going crazy," Keisha Patel, a witness, told WKRG. She was at the gas station when she spotted the child walking toward it.

"Two females were going crazy. They almost hit him and she said the crazy thing was I was a little distracted because I was on my phone and the kid just appeared. She said I had to swerve to keep from hitting him," Patel added.

Patel's daughter, Makayla Jones, too saw the boy walking toward the parking lot. "The child could have died or have got hit. I don't know where he came from, but like I just saw him come from the street. It was very scary," Jones told the news outlet.

The child was taken to safety by a gas station employee who then called 911. "Traffic is heavy on both sides of the street here. The fact that a car didn't touch him? God had him. You see the traffic out there right now, it don't stop. The good Lord must have been looking over him," Hammond told reporters.

The police chief added that though the speed limit there was 50mph, people rarely stick to that, sometimes even going 100 miles per hour.

Less than 10 minutes after the child was found, his mother called 911. Her identity was not revealed.

"She said she was changing the child's diaper, her daughter. She turned around and looked after she got through, and he wasn't there. She went outside looked, he wasn't there. She sort of panicked a little bit, called her husband, and then called 911," Hammond was quoted by NBC 15.

Though the Department of Human Resources was notified as per the protocol, police do not suspect any wrongdoing on the part of the mother. It was not clear if the child was reunited with his mother.

Child Wandering
Representational image Pixabay
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