‘Incredible’: Non-verbal six-year-old boy found after disappearing in the Dandenongs
By Ashleigh McMillan and Cassandra Morgan
In seconds, six-year-old autistic and non-verbal boy Parsa Naimi escaped from his parents’ view at a Dandenong Ranges playground, which was teeming with excited children on the Easter long weekend.
Calling out his name and walking loops of the park, family and friends spent half an hour desperately searching for the boy at the Olinda Playspace, before emergency services joined just after 4.30pm.
Parsa was found safe and well on Saturday, 16 hours after going missing in the Dandenongs.Credit: Nine News
More than 200 people, including Dandenongs locals, pitched in as the search went long into the night and further into the forest. Sniffer dogs were called in as the air wing surveilled from the skies.
Police played Parsa’s favourite song – Hickory Dickory Dock – from their car PA systems, hoping to lure him out from his hiding spot somewhere in the dense, scrubby terrain.
The young boy, from Forest Hill, was wearing an AirTag, and a ping appeared on the map around midnight.
But the hope didn’t last. The device was found hanging on a tree, and officers surmised that Parsa must have taken it off after becoming annoyed by its incessant beeping.
Houses on the edge of dense bush in Kalorama, near where the six-year-old boy was found. Credit: Jason South
Acting Senior Sergeant Melissa Gostimir said she woke up on Saturday morning disheartened when she realised they hadn’t made a breakthrough in the search overnight.
Not long after sunrise, 18-year-old Kalorama local Asher Shinkfield jumped on his mountain bike for his usual morning ride with a mate, knowing that volunteers were methodically sweeping the area for the six-year-old.
And there was Parsa, sitting in the middle of a trail, some 16 hours later and more than eight kilometres away from where he disappeared.
“He was fairly calm, but he was really tired. It was obviously a long night just sitting on the ground,” Shinkfield told Nine News.
“Thank God we were able to find him, that’s just miraculous.”
Gostimir said he “didn’t have a scratch on him” despite his mammoth journey, almost making it to Kalorama on the northern flank of the Dandenongs.
“It is such a rollercoaster of emotions when all this different intel comes through ... but obviously, it’s ended with such an incredible story,” she said at a press conference.
“He was reunited with [his] mum, and he was so happy to be with her that he just curled up in a ball and went to sleep straight away. He’s had a couple of orange juices, which he’s happy about.
“It’s definitely an Easter miracle.”
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