Search for Alaska grandma halted after toddler found in car

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Officers have ended their search for a girl whose 2-year-old grandchild was discovered alone final week in a locked automobile that caught in mud on a rural Alaska street, authorities mentioned.

No clues to the whereabouts of Mary Daybreak Wilson, 69, have emerged since her Ford Focus was discovered final Thursday with the kid and private objects believed to belong to Wilson, the Alaska Division of Public Security mentioned in a press release on Saturday.

Authorities consider the kid was alone within the automobile for 2 days.

The search was modified from “energetic” to “reactive,” which means {that a} search could possibly be launched once more if officers obtain new info or proof, the assertion mentioned.

The assertion added that at “this time, there is no such thing as a proof of foul play related to Wilson’s disappearance.”

Wilson’s automobile was discovered Thursday on Stampede Street, off the Parks Freeway simply outdoors the small neighborhood of Healy. Officers consider her car received caught on Tuesday and that she began strolling away from the freeway as an alternative of towards it.

The toddler was initially handed over to the state Workplace of Kids’s Companies and seemed to be in good well being, officers have mentioned.

The kid was later reunited with their mom, the Anchorage Each day Information reported. Wilson had been watching the kid whereas the mom was working in rural Alaska.

Stampede Street is legendary for being the principle thoroughfare that adventurers used to retrace the steps of Christopher McCandless, a younger idealist whose journey on the Stampede Path ended along with his dying.

The path street finally ends at treacherous Alaska backcountry, the place McCandless took shelter in an deserted metropolis bus after he turned trapped by the swollen Teklanika River.

He died of hunger in 1992 and his life and dying have been made well-known by the ebook “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer after which by the film directed by Sean Penn.

Over time, folks making an attempt to achieve the bus that was situated about 25 miles (40 kilometers) from Healy to pay pilgrimage to McCandless needed to be rescued or died. That prompted state officers to take away the bus from the backcountry in 2020.