A two-year-old St. Albert boy who was missing for 14 hours in rural Saskatchewan has mostly recovered physically, but his mother says emotional scars linger.
Gabe Barrington-Moss said prior to his ordeal Courtlund slept on his own, but now he is sleeping with her every night and waking up fearful of where he is.
“Basically, it just happened in a split second,” said Barrington-Moss, who got a call at home in St. Albert around 8 p.m. Thursday, July 22, telling her that her son was missing from a rural Saskatchewan property near Aneroid, about 70 km southeast of Swift Current.
Keeley Moat, the toddler's other mother, was heading back from a funeral with Courtlund and had stopped in to visit her aunt in Aneroid when the toddler disappeared. Video footage showed the little boy heading east into a four-foot-high wheat field.
“He’s like two feet tall, so it’s like a literal needle in a hay stack,” Barrington-Moss said, who left immediately for Saskatchewan with her brother-in-law for a fretful nine-hour drive. Over the course of the night Barrington-Moss said she feared the worst, thinking about the terrain around the house, including dugouts filled with water, coyotes and endless wheat fields.
She also started to fear someone had taken Courtlund because all search efforts – including a STARS infrared helicopter and police dogs – were failing to find the toddler.
“I just thought, could someone have taken him, then your mind starts to spiral when you start thinking that,” Barrington-Moss said.
Immediately after arriving at the scene around 5 a.m. Barrington-Moss, a long-time long-distance runner, slipped on her runners and began sprinting back and forth across the wheat fields. For hours Barrington-Moss said she ran, hysterically crying and praying.
“When you’re tromping through a field like that (a child) could be two feet over from you and it’s so thick you’d never see them,” she said. “It’s just maddening.”
About 14 hours after Courtlund went missing, the toddler – who loves horses – was found giggling in a mud pit by a rescuer on horseback. Barrington-Moss said she heard a yell over a radio and immediately jumped on with the nearest searcher on horseback to get to her son.
“It was such an influx of emotions. I was really grateful, but also worried,” she said. Barrington-Moss, who is a nurse, took an inventory of his various scratches, sunburns and a tick in his ear, and then Courtlund was taken to hospital for assessment.
Going through such a traumatic experience has made her grateful for every moment with her children.
“I think it makes you very grateful for all the tender moments that you have with your kids, and not taking those moments for granted,” Barrington-Moss said. “You never think something like that will happen to you.”
