Autistic 6-year-old found safe after 40-hour search in rural Kentucky

A 6-year-old boy with autism who vanished into the wooded hills of eastern Kentucky was found alive roughly 40 hours later, after one of the largest search operations the rural county has seen in years and the activation of a state alert system created only two years ago for children just like him.

Roman Heilman was last seen around 3:45 p.m. Sunday near his family's home on Tadpole Road outside Louisa, a small Lawrence County town along the West Virginia border, according to the missing-child alert Kentucky State Police issued that afternoon. He was gone before anyone noticed, and he took the family dog with him into the woods.

A race against worsening weather

More than 300 volunteers joined state police, the Kentucky National Guard and search-and-rescue crews brought in from West Virginia and Ohio, scouring dense brush on foot, on horseback and from the air with helicopters and drones, CBS News reported. Lawrence County's emergency management director, Travis Hughes, said crews sent horseback teams deep into the terrain once it became clear the boy had no clothes and rain was approaching.

"We knew this child was without clothes and we knew there was weather moving in, raining," Hughes said, explaining the decision to push mounted searchers further into the brush.

Searchers got their first solid lead when they found a muddy footprint that led to a trail of discarded clothing — a jacket, pants and a diaper — about a mile and a half from the Heilman home. On Tuesday morning, roughly 40 hours after he disappeared, Roman walked out of the brush with the family dog at his side. He was naked and covered in scratches. Rescuers had been singing one of his favorite songs to coax him toward them; when he emerged, he pointed at the horses before a team wrapped him in a blanket and gave him food, according to CBS's account. Kentucky State Police confirmed the recovery Tuesday, thanking the hundreds of volunteers and the local, state and federal agencies involved, local outlet The Levisa Lazer reported. Accounts of the final moments vary slightly — the Lazer, citing a resident's social media post, said he was found near an abandoned vehicle rather than emerging on his own — but all agree he survived roughly two nights outdoors with only the dog for company. Roman was taken to a regional hospital, where he was being treated for dehydration.

A new alert system built after an earlier tragedy

The search was conducted under Kentucky's Ian Alert system, a statewide notification network for missing children with intellectual or developmental disabilities that is distinct from an Amber Alert because the child has not been abducted. The system is codified in state law at KRS 16.176 and run by the Kentucky State Police in coordination with emergency management and broadcast partners. Lawmakers created it after the 2022 death of Ian Sousis, a 9-year-old autistic boy who drowned in the Ohio River after wandering from a children's home in Covington; an alert in his case was not issued until hours after he ran off, by which time he was already dead. Gov. Andy Beshear signed the bill into law, and it took effect on July 15, 2024.

Wandering, sometimes called elopement, is a well-documented risk for children on the autism spectrum. A nationally representative analysis of U.S. households published through the National Institutes of Health's research archive found that about 26.7% of children with autism or other developmental disabilities had wandered or gone missing within the previous year, with the rate climbing above 32% among children with autism specifically. A separate, smaller survey of self-selected families reported a lifetime rate near 49%, though researchers caution that figure is not representative of the broader population. Public places were the single most common setting where children went missing, the federal data show, followed by their own homes.

A county mobilized

Lawrence County is sparsely populated and heavily wooded, and officials said the scale of the volunteer response — among the largest search efforts local emergency managers could recall — reflected how quickly word spread through the small community once the alert went out Sunday evening. Churches, fire departments and ordinary residents joined trained search teams through two cold, wet nights, before the searchers using horses ultimately reached the area where Roman was found.

Kentucky's Ian Alert system is one of a small but growing number of state-level efforts to address wandering by children with autism and other developmental disabilities, a well-documented risk that has prompted similar proposals in other states in recent years. It was the mechanism Kentucky State Police used to spread word of Roman's disappearance within hours of the alert going out Sunday evening, drawing in the hundreds of volunteers, National Guard personnel and out-of-state search teams who ultimately found him roughly two days later. The statute requires the alert to be issued without the delay that preceded Ian Sousis's death in 2022, and state officials have pointed to cases like Roman's as evidence the faster notification process is working as intended.

Roman's family has not spoken publicly in detail, and officials have not said whether he will require extended hospitalization. The case is expected to close now that he has been recovered safely, though it is likely to be cited by Kentucky officials as evidence the two-year-old alert system is working as intended for the population it was built to protect. State police have not said whether any formal review of the search will follow, as is sometimes done after large-scale rescues to refine future response.