The child’s recovery in a remote, heavily-wooded area at about 2:30 a.m. Sunday “was a miracle,” Ross Jessop, the Missoula County Sheriff’s deputy who first scooped the child into his arms, tells PEOPLE.
Locating the child turned his despair into “complete joy and happiness,” he says.
Crowley’s exact relationship with the child has not been revealed.
Missoula County Sheriff’s Office
According to the probable cause affidavit, deputies were called to a disturbance at Lolo Hot Springs about 8 p.m. Saturday after Crowley had been accused of trespassing and returned allegedly threatening to fire a gun. Officers learned from witnesses including the child’s mother that there had been a car crash with Crowley as the driver, and the 5-month-old passenger in the car was missing.
Officers arrested Crowley, who allegedly admitted to “ingesting methamphetamine and bath salts,” but they said his “disoriented” condition made him unable to direct them to the child, the affidavit states.
Jessop and U.S. Forest Service officer Nick Scholz then both heard “a very faint noise” and followed it in the darkness to a spot on heavily wooded private property where they found the boy “facedown in a wet and soiled onesie with temperatures in the 40’s,” the sheriff’s department said ina news release posted to its Facebook page.
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The child coughed up small sticks during transport to the hospital, where he still was being treated Tuesday for dehydration, lack of food, and scratches, cuts and bruises “as a result of being left on the ground,” according to the affidavit.
Crowley’s attorney was not identified. Crowley is due back in court July 25.
The turn of events uplifted the deputy in more ways than one.
“For the past three years, I have been really struggling to try to maintain a positive outlook on my career,” says Jessop, a 10-year veteran of law enforcement. “We see so much negativity all the time, it’s just that constant grind. You kind of lose hope; I think all cops do.” After first hearing about the missing-and-presumed dead boy, and containing his own anger as a parent, “you’re just wondering, how can humanity do this to a small child?”
“You know what? Sometimes cops make a difference in life,” he says. “Sometimes it’s not always the bad things.”
“Sometimes, just sometimes, we get lucky breaks like this.”
source: people.com
