Hundreds Sang a Children’s Song Through the Kentucky Hills for Two Days — Then a Missing 6-Year-Old Walked Out of the Bushes Talking to the Horses

The little dog came out of the brush first.

It was shortly before 11:30 on Tuesday morning, deep in the steep, wooded hills of Lawrence County, Kentucky. A line of volunteers on horseback had been picking their way along a trail since before daylight when the dog trotted out in front of them. Seconds later, a small blond boy stepped out of the bushes behind it.

He was naked, covered in briar scratches and hungry. He had been alone in those hills for nearly 44 hours. And as he walked toward the horses, he spoke.

“He came out of the bushes saying ‘E-I-E-I-O horsey,’” rider Jacob Mullins told the Lexington Herald-Leader. “He just walked right out of the bushes over onto a horse trail.”

Two Cold Nights and a Boy Who Couldn’t Call for Help

The boy was 6-year-old Roman Heilman, and the people who had spent two days hunting for him knew exactly why every hour mattered.

Roman has autism and is nonverbal. He was last seen around 3:45 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 1, at his home on Tadpole Road near Louisa, wearing a green fur jacket, red-and-white “monster” pants and Crocs. By the time Kentucky State Police issued an IAN Alert, the statewide warning for missing people with autism, the light was fading and rain was moving through the hills.

The terrain was unforgiving. Lawrence County Emergency Management Director Travis Hughes told WYMT the area was thick with vegetation, steep hills, ponds and cliffs. And Roman could not shout back to anyone calling his name. Searchers were warned that loud noises or sudden movements might frighten him and send him deeper into the woods, The Mountain Citizen reported.

So officials gave them something else to try. Roman, they said, was known to respond to one song. Hundreds of volunteers fanned out across the mountains singing “If You’re Happy and You Know It.”

The Clues That Made Everything Worse

The ground search was called off on Sunday night because many volunteers weren’t equipped to keep going safely in the dark. The hunt moved to the sky. State police aircraft with thermal imaging swept the hills overnight, and drones joined them.

By Monday, the response had grown into a small army. Volunteers gathered at Richardson Missionary Baptist Church, bowed their heads in prayer and took their assignments. K-9 teams, firefighters and search-and-rescue crews worked alongside neighbors and strangers from three states. People who couldn’t search dropped off food, water, flashlights and ponchos.

Then came the clues. Muddy little footprints. Then, on Monday morning, Roman’s jacket and pants. Searchers also found his diaper.

“That give us more hope,” Hughes said. “But now, we also, at the same time, we need to find this child.”

The county’s emergency management office later wrote on Facebook about how frightening that was. “We had received information that the child had removed his clothing at some point, which made the situation even more concerning, especially with the possibility of exposure to the elements,” the post said. “Every minute mattered.”

On Monday night, as the Kentucky National Guard brought in its own aircraft, Roman was still out there.

“Let’s Take Off Work and Go Find This Kid”

That same night, Mullins, a horse trail rider who owns a window-cleaning business in Louisa, got a text from his friend Patrick Finley, a welder from just across the state line in West Virginia.

“Let’s take off work and go find this kid,” it said.

“So that’s what we did,” Mullins told the Herald-Leader.

They weren’t alone. Sami Jo Brock, her husband Jake, her sister Maddison Morales and their friend Jonah Lainhart traveled about two and a half hours from Jeffersonville to look for a boy they had never met, according to The Mountain Citizen. By dawn on Tuesday, about 10 riders were in the woods.

The riders believed horses had an edge. They could reach places ATVs couldn’t, and they did it quietly. Mullins thinks the roar of motorized search vehicles may have been scaring Roman into hiding.

That morning, a drone picked up a heat signature in the mountains, Hughes said, and the horseback team was sent in. Then someone spotted a lollipop wrapper on the ground, and the riders followed the path it pointed to. That is when the little dog popped out, followed by the boy.

Roman ran straight to Lainhart and clung to his neck.

“He surely wasn’t scared of a horse either,” Brock said.

The Horse That Seemed to Know

The riders had come prepared. They wrapped Roman in a sweatshirt and gave him water, a banana and a couple of fruit gummy snacks, which he ate on the spot. Then they lifted him onto a horse and started down the mountain. Mullins said the group rode more than 14 miles in all. Roman was about a mile and a half from home.

“It looks like he was just traveling the mountaintops, really,” Mullins said. “You can see his footprints where he played in a mud hole.”

Brock gives much of the credit to the horse that carried him out, Macee. She said Macee seemed to sense something and veered toward the spot just before Lainhart saw the boy.

“I thank God for the amazing animals we had today and Macee being worth her weight in gold for packing this baby out and even wanting to veer toward him right before he was spotted,” she said.

Then there was the dog. Rescuers had been told early on that Roman’s dog was probably with him, because it hadn’t been seen since he vanished either. Searchers believe it may have stayed by his side for both nights. Hughes thinks the horses alerted the dog, and that when it came out onto the trail, Roman followed.

An ambulance reached them within about 15 minutes. Roman was dehydrated and scraped up, but nothing was broken.

“He was fine, no broken bones, just a few scratches, little dirty feet, but it was one of the most rewarding things to see him smile,” Hughes said.

“Something I’ll Never Forget”

Mullins is convinced the quiet approach made the difference. “I think without the horses, he wouldn’t have come out,” he said.

Kentucky State Police thanked “the hundreds of volunteers who assisted in the search.” Lawrence County Schools Superintendent Katie Webb put it more simply: “Today I got to see a miracle.” The National Autism Association, which had urged everyone to sing Roman’s song, thanked all those who “sang his song in the woods. This community showed up for Roman.”

Hughes, who coordinated the search, says he’ll never find the words to thank them. But he wasn’t surprised. That, he said, is what mountain people do.

“It’s nothing short of a miracle,” he told WYMT. “And it’s something I’ll never forget as long as I live, being a part of this.”

He has been told Roman is doing well and is in good spirits. For two days, hundreds of people walked those hills singing “If You’re Happy and You Know It” to a boy they couldn’t see. On Tuesday, he walked out to meet them, smiling.