Youngster Survives Nearly Three Days Lost in Lawrence County woods

By Roberta Cantrell
BSN Editor

Little six-year-old Roman Heilman wandered from his home around 3:45 Sunday afternoon, Nov. 1, according to his mother.

Roman was reported to be a non-verbal autistic child and was often seen by neighbors playing in the road usually in a diaper, but hadn’t remembered seeing him in a few days.

One neighbor said he hadn’t been going to school since Monday of last week.

A search immediately began Sunday afternoon for the child with Lawrence County Emergency Management Director Travis Hughes bringing in resources from several agencies and other counties also responding with equipment in hopes of finding the child quickly.

However, weather conditions and nightfall made the search dangerous and impossible to see so the search was called off until early Monday morning. When morning came more agencies poured in to assist with even more drones, ATV’s, dogs, boats, and underwater equipment to search nearby fishing ponds and more drones using infrared lighting. State police used helicopters for aerial views until 9:30 p.m., when the national guard took over the aerial search that continued through the night.

Hundreds of people showed up to assist in the search and were being bussed in from Richardson Church to the scene on Tadpole Road. A lot of citizens had to be turned away to keep from contaminating search areas.

During Monday’s search a green jacket, diaper, shoe, a pair of pants and two footprints that they believed belonged to the child were found.

Tuesday morning it was considered that the loud noise from ATV’s may be scaring the child so they decided to go with search crews on horseback and ground crews only combing areas on foot.

It was horseback rider, Jonah Lainhart, with his crew of riders that was searching, who he said a dog, Roman’s dog who had been with him throughout the time he’d been missing, stepped out in front of his horse. When Lainhart got down from his horse he seen Roman in the bush and said the child ran to him and would not let go of him.

Roman was found not far from where search crews located a foot print the day before.

Lainhart said he received a call from his friend stating they were needed in Lawrence County because a child was missing and after that call, he said God just told him they needed to come here and “they loaded up their team and it prevailed”.

The team came from nearby Mount Sterling. Lainhart said they arrived at 2 a.m. and waited until they could start their search locating the child at approximately 11 a.m. at which time he gave the child a banana to eat and water.

He was taken to Three Rivers Medical Center by Rapid Emergency Management Ambulance Service for evaluation.

Also on the scene was Lawrence County Superintendent Katie Webb, several Board of Education staff members along with teaching staff who were replaced by sub teachers while they were helping with the search of one of their students.