This image provided by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children shows Porter Stone, 5, who is missing after police say his father took him from a St. Louis hospital where he is on a heart transplant waiting list.
It sounds like a story that only Hollywood would write, but this tale is tragically true. An Amber Alert was issued Tuesday for a five-year old boy kidnapped from a St. Louis hospital, where he was awaiting a heart transplant. To make a bad situation even worse, the boy only had enough medicine to last for 24 hours and without medical attention his life would be seriously endangered. Kiefer Sutherland was busy, but thankfully state police were on the job.
5-year-old Porter Stone was reported missing from St. Louis Children’s Hospital at 4:20 p.m. But the abduction was no mystery: with both parents reportedly mired in a custody dispute, Stone’s father had called his wife earlier that afternoon and reported that he was taking the boy. “After the discharge, the father took the child to the pharmacy and the mother went to get the car. The mother then reported that the father never came to the car,” Dr. Sessions Cole of St. Louis Children’s Hospital told local news station KSDK.
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Felony warrants were issued for the boy’s father and grandmother on charges of kidnapping, interfering with custody and endangering the welfare of a child. According to KSDK, the Illinois State Police found the 5-year-old, along with his father Jeffrey Stone and grandmother Rhonda Marie Mathews in Alsip, Ill. near Chicago. Both adults were taken into custody while the child, uninjured, was taken to a hospital for a full evaluation.
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