The Orange County Sheriff’s Office helped locate a missing three-year-old in Mebane on Thursday, who was found safe and nearby.

A release from the sheriff’s office said deputies, along with officers from the North Carolina State Highway Patrol and the North Carolina Division of Adult Probation and Parole, responded to a call after a child left a fenced backyard through an unlocked gate. Elsie Hall had been playing with her brother outside before she went missing. According to the sheriff’s office, family members searched their home, a secondary residence on the property and nearby woods before contacting the authorities.

Following a search between the three agencies, Elsie was found wedged behind a sofa in the secondary residence. The release said family members identified the furniture as where the child frequently sits when visiting the occupant of the home. The child’s mother said in the release she believes Elsie became frightened and hid when people began calling her name.

Orange County Sheriff Charles Blackwood said it is important for his deputies to act quickly when a child is missing and to use as many resources to search an area.

“When children are frightened for any reason, their behavior becomes unpredictable,” he said in the release. “Our deputies, including a K-9 team and a drone operator, were on scene, and our partners from other agencies were searching the woods and a nearby swimming pool. Children are often somewhere right nearby, but you can’t take the chance that they are not.”

“My whole world turned upside down yesterday,” said Megan Price, Elsie’s mother, via the sheriff’s office. “The sense of relief I feel is indescribable. No one made me feel bad for calling even though she was found right nearby. I am so grateful.”

Photo via the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.

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