MIDDLETON, N.S. - Police say a special transmitter bracelet helped to save the day for a seven-year-old girl who wandered away from home along Nova Scotia's Bay of Fundy shoreline.
RCMP and search and rescue personnel responded to the report of the missing autistic child near Margaretsville around 4:30 p.m. Friday.
Luckily, the girl was wearing the radio wrist transmitter, which sent out tracking signals in the heavily wooded area.
Const. Paul Landry of the RCMP's Middleton detachment said the transmissions led searchers trained by Project Lifesaver in the right direction.
Landry said they found the girl near a stream around 6:15 p.m. and she appeared to be fine.
"We had a general idea where she may be ... but she wasn't found when the mother looked in a few spots," Landry said in an interview Saturday.
"So we knew that she had this bracelet and we got in contact with ground search and rescue, who had the capability to track her. Once they came out they actually found her in probably 20 or 25 minutes from the time they opened up their antenna and started searching."
The Project Lifesaver website says the non-profit organization equips and trains search and rescue agencies to find people who wander.
The organization says the technology is especially useful in cases involving those with autism or Alzheimer's disease.
Landry said local search and rescue teams are keen to let people know about the technology and how it works, "so that other jurisdictions will come on board to start using it."
He said it could be useful in a number of circumstances.
"For us a lot of times, when we're conducting a search ... sometimes people, whatever their condition is, young or old, they're scared of hearing people coming through the woods and they'll run away from you."
