‘It’s actually mostly Shiloh that found us’: Police K-9 helps track, find 3 lost boys

MAGNOLIA, N.J. (KYW) - Three boys from New Jersey were found safe after they went missing Monday, thanks to the efforts of a bloodhound who tracked their scent.

“The whole neighborhood was looking for us,” said Leo Evans, one of the boys who was missing. “I mean the whole neighborhood.”

For Leo and his brother Kai Evans, a maker’s workshop is pretty much the only place they can go after they, along with another friend, got lost while riding their bikes through the woods.

It took departments from two counties to find them.

“Thank you. If you guys are watching this, I’m grateful that you guys found us,” Kai said.

While the boys are grateful for all officers who searched for them, they’re grateful for one officer in particular.

“It’s actually mostly Shiloh that found us,” Leo said.

Shiloh is a K-9 with the Gloucester County Sheriff’s Department.

When the boys couldn’t be found for hours, she was called in to help.

The sheriff’s office first got bloodhounds in 2013. They’re trained in looking for kids and older adults with Alzheimer’s or dementia.

“They’re trained on human scent,” said Alex Molnar, with the Gloucester County Sheriff’s Office. “We give them a specific scent article, and they’re trained to track that specific human scent.”

To find the boys, officers collected their bed sheets to provide a scent and Shiloh got to work.

The search party still had a major roadblock: a creek they had to walk through to find the boys.

“Sometimes water was couple inches, other times it was over our thighs, up to the waist,” Molnar said.

After a mile of walking through the creek, they finally found the boys.

“Come around the corner, through the creek and there’s these three kids, standing in the creek like ‘Lord of the Flies,’” Molnar said. “Just hanging out.”

It may be a while before the boys are allowed to explore again.

“I heard they got grounded,” Molnar said.

Their grandmother, Charese Evans, said that they will be spending a lot more time at home

“No, I didn’t tell them they were grounded until they got home,” Evans said. " Actually, in the car ... I was like, just so you know you are confined to the backyard and the house for the rest of the summer.”

The boys were not seriously hurt during the time they went missing. Police said they had looked up YouTube videos on how to survive in the wild while they were lost.

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