A local family was no doubt relieved to learn Friday that their missing 13-year-old son had been found safe, albeit more than a thousand miles from home in Louisiana.
Kadin Kent Willauer was located by Louisiana State Police near Baton Rouge five days after Pennsylvania State Police said he ran away from his home in Milford Township near Quakertown, Bucks County.
Troopers from the state police’s Dublin barracks had said he took cash with him when he drove off in his parents’ white Chrysler Town & Country minivan in the middle of the night, gasing it up in Upper Saucon Township around 4 a.m. and later putting a stolen license plate on the vehicle.
Troopers initially believed Willauer was somewhere in the Bucks County area, but that theory was called into question after it later emerged that hours after leaving Pennsylvania, surveillance video had captured the van headed southbound on I-95 in Fairfax County, Virginia.
Trooper Nathan Branosky of the Dublin barracks tweeted the news of Willauer’s interception Friday and thanked everyone who assisted in the search for him.