Child Accidentally Abandoned On I-80

Actually this happened to me once. But it was not my parents, it was a school teacher who left me behind on a field trip. She did have about a dozen other kids, so, I was not too mad.

Rock Springs Wyoming. Parents driving two separate vehicles. One gets a flat tire on interstate 80. Everybody out. Fix the tire. Back in the vehicle and off they fly toward the horizon.

Each parent had just assumed that their 9 year old had jumped into the other vehicle when they left.

According to the Green River Police Department, the child was seen walking down the highway by a passing motorist. It is rather odd to see a kid on an interstate highway so many miles from even the nearest ranch, much less town. They stopped to see why the kid was out there, then offered a ride.

“Troopers were able to safely reunite the child with his family after determining there were no underlying suspicious circumstances,” the Highway Patrol said in a release.

“Thanks to the combined efforts of the Green River Police Department, responding troopers, and the act of the good Samaritans who stopped when they saw the young boy on the side of the road, this situation ended well,” they said.

Well now, mom and dad are never going to live this one down, are they? I bet that kid got a big dessert that night at dinner. And I bet the parents spent the rest of the road trip looking back over their shoulder just to make sure of things.