An emergency dispatcher with Metro’s police department helped track down a wayward 12-year-old autistic boy who made his way from Union Station to just outside of Baltimore, according to Metro.
Kenneth Nickerson answered a frantic call from the boy’s mother on March 26. The mother and son had gotten separated at Union Station, she told Nickerson. Because the boy is fascinated with buses and trains, she said she had already looked all over local bus stops and train stations — but had no luck.
Nickerson dispatched the boy’s description to Metro transit police officers.
But he also had an idea, according to Metro. The woman had mentioned that her son had been interested in going to Baltimore. He contacted the bus division to see if a B30 bus was en route to Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.
The bus operations center told him a bus was indeed about 10 minutes away, and radioed a description of the missing boy to the bus operator.
“Sure enough, the bus operator confirmed that the missing 12-year-old boy was aboard that very bus,” Metro police Chief Michael Taborn said Thursday when recounting the tale to Metro’s board of directors.
So Nickerson contacted the BWI airport police to have them intercept the boy when the bus arrived at the airport.
Metro transit police then picked up the boy and reunited him with his mother.
