- November 16, 2024
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Bystanders stopped a two-year-old girl who wandered onto Belle Terre Parkway the morning of June 20, then waited with her for deputies to arrive after one of them called 911 for help.
Flagler County Sheriff’s Office Deputy James Miley was dispatched to the scene at the intersection of Braddock Lane and Belle Terre Parkway at about 10:14 a.m., where he found the bystanders standing with the toddler, who was unharmed and wearing just a T-shirt and a diaper. The man who’d called the Sheriff’s Office and was protecting the little girl quickly turned her over to the Miley and left.
A woman at the scene told Miley that “she observed the young child follow a small dog across the south bound lanes of Belle Terre onto the median where bystanders intervened and stopped the girl from continuing,” Miley wrote in his report on the incident.
Miley and a Sheriff's Office corporal checked the neighborhood witnesses had seen the little girl walking from, and a woman hailed them on Bradmore Lane. The woman, 24-year-old Heather Lynn Seils, said that she was the little girl’s mother.
She said she’d fallen asleep, and that when she awoke to check on her 2-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son — who she’d thought were watching TV — the front door was open and her two-year-old girl and the family dog were both missing.
Seils told Miley “that she then checked with her neighbors and began to run inside her residence to call the Sheriff’s Office, but was advised by a neighbor that law enforcement was on scene,” according to Miley’s report.
The said the family was new to the area, and that the home’s front door wasn’t locked.
Miley gave her information of child-proofing the home to keep her daughter from escaping again. but it was not locked at the time. Heather was thankful that Law enforcement located the child and she was given information on child proofing her residence to prevent this type of situation from reoccurring.
“I commend the quick actions of the bystanders who saw this little girl in need of help and Deputy Miley for caring for her until her mother was located,” Sheriff James L. Manfre said in the news release.
The deputies informed the Department of Children and Families of the incident, according to the case report.
