It was cold and late at night when 8-year-old Nadeem Conde went missing from his home in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, a few weeks ago, leaving his family panicked.
Conde has autism, and his mother, Fatmata Zine, knew how much he was drawn to the water. She started to cry after assuming the worst, that Conde had drowned and she’d never see him again.
The family sought help, and around 11 p.m., Prince George’s County police said they responded to the neighborhood for the report of a missing person.
During a rescue mission that involved officers on the ground and the department’s helicopter technology, Conde was found at the edge of a nearby lake. Now, Zine is thanking the officers and tools police used to help get him home.
“I had no hope, but they brought me back hope,” Zine told WTOP after a news conference Tuesday afternoon.
Cpl. Everett Mason Jr. had just finished responding to a call in the Temple Hills neighborhood when he noticed the call for the missing child pop up.
When he got to the neighborhood, he observed all the surrounding water, and Mason Jr. said that on the call, police learned Conde loved to visit the pool. Officers checked the pool area first, but Conde wasn’t there.
“We had about an hour of him possibly being missing,” Mason Jr. said. “He could have been anywhere.”
So the department dispatched its helicopter. Cpl. Chris Elrod, a tactical flight officer, said they had just finished a previous flight when they learned about the missing child.
They rushed to grab their gear, get airborne and get to the scene, Elrod said.
Watch video of the helicopter rescue from Prince George’s County police.
The helicopter features technology with a moving map system, so it shows exactly where it’s flying at any given moment. It also detects heat and assigns a color to every degree to build a picture.
“It was probably 20 to 30 minutes we were looking,” Elrod said. “But it felt like two hours.”
Eventually, Elrod scanned the area and found the body heat that Conde was giving off. Conde was in a lake, and his legs were in the water.
“My heart sank when I saw him in the water,” Elrod said. “I could tell that at some point he was deeper in the water, and I didn’t want him to go back out.”
That’s when he collaborated with Mason Jr., who rushed over to make sure Conde was safe.
“When I reached out and grabbed him, he was cold to the touch,” Mason Jr. said. “He was wet from the shoulder down, so he had already been in the water, submerged to that point. It was just relief finding him, could have been a totally different outcome.”
Zine, meanwhile, said she’s changed the locks to their house, and has purchased cameras she’s installing. But as recently as Thursday, Conde left again, leaving through a guest bathroom window.
“It’s very devastating,” Zine said. “Dealing with him alone is a stress.”
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