Searchers pose for a photo after finding a missing 8-year-old boy who had been lost for several hours in the woods near his Goshen Hill Road SE home. The search party included volunteers, Tuscarawas County Sheriff's deputies, state troopers, and members of the New Philadelphia Fire Department and others. (Tuscarawas County Sheriff's Office)

NEW PHILADELPHIA (Tusco TV) - The Tuscarawas County Sheriff is thanking everyone who came out to help them find a missing 8-year-old who got lost in the woods Sunday afternoon.

Orvis Campbell says the boy was chasing after his new puppy when he ventured off into a wooded area near his Goshen Hill Road SE home. Campbell says the family called for help around 2:30 pm after they were unable to locate the child on their own. 

“Their 8-year-old boy had gone off they believed into the woods with a new dog they had just adopted, and they had been searching for maybe an hour and a half to two hours before calling us, and then they contacted us and we began our search,” he says.

Campbell says they figured the boy couldn’t have gotten far, although they were still concerned for his safety due to the length of time he had been out there and the some of features of the terrain. 

“It was one of those situations where the real danger, the real concern for us was that part of that property was stripped and there were high walls and ponds,” he says. “We were concerned mostly that at some point maybe the boy had fallen and gotten hurt or something like that.”

Campbell says they had officers scouring the area on horseback and ATVs and even brought in a drone, but in the end, it was the searchers on foot who found the boy and the dog and brought them back home. 

“We were spread out periodically yelling his name, and eventually some searchers that was comprised of guys from both the sheriff’s office and New Phila Fire Department got a glimpse of him and found him and the dog was right with him,” he says.

Campbell says the child was very thirsty and had gotten stuck with some briars but was otherwise unaffected by the ordeal. The Ohio Highway Patrol also deployed a helicopter to assist with the search, but the boy was found before it arrived.

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