At 19:40 this evening our Team Leader was contacted directly by the Greater Manchester Police Force Incident Manager, regarding a 22 month old male child who was missing in the Shevington area of Wigan and due to his age and the circumstances of him going missing along with the hours of darkness and night-time temperatures, gave obvious cause for concern.

A major police search response was being initiated alongside calling out a GMP Missing Person Search Manager.

It was therefore decided to call out the full team immediately. Team members were paged at 19:47 to RVP initially at our LBH base prior to a search RVP being determined.

In the interim, our Team Leader travelled direct to the incident location to meet up with the GMP Search Manager.

Arriving on scene at approximately 20:50, our TL Garry Rhodes was met with the good news that the young child had been found safe and well asleep in the rear garden of a property almost immediately opposite the location from which the child had earlier gone missing.

An excellent and happy result to what is often in our experience a sad outcome.

Resources deployed to this search included 23 Bolton MRT members responding, alongside a major response from Greater Manchester Police, including divisional resources, traffic, tactical aid units and Police community support officers.

There was also a huge number of members of the public offering their assistance and taking part in initial and ongoing searches when the child was happily found.

The GMP Police Helicopter was also en-route to assist in the incident.

NWAS (GMA) also sent resources to this incident including an RRV, an emergency ambulance and an Area Operations Manager.

Almost immediately after the conclusion of this incident, the team was called out to another incident in Bolton town centre. See report for Incident 39/2008 for details.