Missing Mecca Township children found unharmed
Two children were found safe Friday morning following an overnight search in Trumbull County. Dispatchers received a call at around 1 am that two young children were missing from their home on Edgewater Drive in Mecca Township. Canine units were called out to help find the two children. About two hours later, the children were found safe at their grandfather's apartment. Police are still investigating the circumstances surrounding how the kids became missing.
Two children were found safe early Friday morning following an overnight search in Trumbull County.
The children, an 18 month old girl and a four year old boy, were reported missing from a Mecca Township home by their father around 1 a.m. Officers said that he mentioned a door was open at the house on the corner of Edgewater and Griffith Drives in Mecca Township and he couldn't find them.
Search and rescue dogs were called out from Weathersfield Police and the Mecca Fire Department, as well as Ohio State Highway Patrol officers from both Trumbull and Ashtabula Counties who went door to door, blocked the streets and searched cars that were coming and going. An OSP plane was going to be deployed but bad weather kept it grounded. The Mahoning County Sheriff's drone was in route when the children were found.
Shortly after 3 a.m., the children were found safe sleeping in their grandfather's apartment at Pauni Apartments off Route 46 in Cortland. The apartment is three miles away from the house.
Trumbull County Sheriff Sergeant Ron Carr said that they were checking with family and anyone who watched the children, when they sent Cortland Police to check the grandfather's apartment.
Carr said that the children did not run away and that the grandfather had picked them up.
Now the sheriff's office is investigating the circumstances of the call by the father who reported them missing.
Officers said that the father is a single dad who works a lot but they are investigating the possibility of drugs or alcohol being involved.
No charges have been filed at this time but it remains under investigation.