Wilderness training might have helped two young sisters who went missing for nearly two days survive an ordeal in the woods, officials said.
Leia Carrico, 5, and Caroline Carrico, 8, were found on March 3 about 44 hours after vanishing from their house in northern California.
They survived even though temperatures dropped into the 30s. Humboldt County Sheriff William Honsal called the discovery “an absolute miracle.”
“They were safe and sound, still ambulatory, in good spirits, not injured,” he said at a press conference after the girls were found. “It’s nothing but good news right now.”
The sheriff’s office received information indicating the girls were comfortable in the woods, having received different kinds of training.
“This was rugged territory, this is an extreme environment and how they were out there for 44 hours is pretty amazing but it shows a resilience of people that actually grew up in this community. These girls definitely have a survival story to tell,” he said. “The information we gathered is that they were trained, through 4-H, for outdoor survival and we believe that that did play a part, but we’re only speculating right now.”
“We’ll wait to interview them to see what the last 44 hours was like [for them],” he added.
Rescuers found the girls huddled together under a bush near Richardson State Park, about 1.4 miles from their house in Benbow.
Delbert Crumley, fire chief in Piercy, and Abram Hill, a firefighter, found them after a search conducted by more than 250 people.
The girls’ story supports the theory that training helped them survive.
They told first responders that they got lost following a deer trail and decided to stay where they were instead of wandering further, the sheriff’s office said in a press release. They drank fresh water from huckleberry leaves as they waited for help.
Rescuers found granola bar wrappers and later saw boot prints left by the girls.
Their mother Misty Carrico said the girls left their house on Friday afternoon.
“The two asked to go for a walk. The mother said, ‘No.’ And then in the course of getting things ready and stuff, she noticed they were missing around 3 o’clock,” Honsal said.
Benbow missing girls found safe https://t.co/4SgVZ6HqjA pic.twitter.com/IRMQieNeNf
— Humboldt County Sheriff (@HumCoSO) March 4, 2019
Missing Children
There were 464,324 missing children reported in the FBI’s National Crime Information Center in 2017, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Under federal law, when a child is reported missing to law enforcement they must be entered into the database.
Missing children typically fall into five categories: kidnapped by a family member, abducted by a nonfamily perpetrator, runaways, those who got lost, stranded, or injured, or those who went missing due to benign reasons, such as misunderstandings.
In 2017, the center said it assisted officers and families with the cases of more than 27,000 missing children. In those cases, 91 percent were endangered runaways, and 5 percent were family abductions.
In 2016, there were 465,676 entries. “This number represents reports of missing children. That means if a child runs away multiple times in a year, each instance would be entered into NCIC separately and counted in the yearly total. Likewise, if an entry is withdrawn and amended or updated, that would also be reflected in the total,” the center noted.
The number of reported missing children significantly decreased in recent years, according to a report by the Department of Justice (pdf) in 2017. Reported missing children dropped from 6.5 per 1,000 children in 1999 to 3.1 per 1,000 in 2013.
Department of Justice researchers said in a separate report (pdf) published in 2016 that there were an estimated 105 children nationwide that were victims of stereotypical kidnappings, a number that was virtually the same as 1997.
“Most kidnappings involved the use of force or threats, and about three in five victims were sexually assaulted, abused, or exploited, the researchers said. Stereotypical kidnappings are defined as abductions in which a slight acquaintance or stranger moves a child at least 20 feet or holds the child at least 1 hour. Most victims were girls aged 12 to 17 and most perpetrators were men aged 18 to 35.
