A toddler who was found standing by himself near Route 9 in Chelsea on Monday has been reunited with his family.
Lt. Chris Read, of the Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office, said the boy, 2 1/2 years old, had been seen on Gilbert Drive near the intersection with Route 9, which is also River Road, around 10:30 a.m. Monday wearing only a diaper.
With the help of the Maine State Police, the guardian of the child, an aunt, was located and the child was returned to her.
“We have done up a report to forward to the Department of Health and Human Services Child Protective Unit,” Read said. “No charges are expected at this time.”
Read declined to give any names.
Rachel S. Hamlin said she spotted the boy on Gilbert Drive as she was driving south to Wiscasset, where she’s a teacher for the Wiscasset School Department and pulled over. She said she and another driver who stopped, changed the boy’s diaper and put a pajama shirt she had in her car on the boy.
Hamlin, who is a mother, posted about finding the boy on Facebook and asked that the post be shared to help find a parent, and she was amazed at the response she got.
“Three women sent me pictures of toddlers to see if it was their friends’ child,” she said.
Hamlin, 37, received a huge flurry of messages in her inbox, a number of them from people she didn’t know directly but who had seen her post.
“I have seen a lot of things like this that come through my newsfeed,” she said.
She said she later spoke with the child’s mother, who asked her to remove the post, which she has done.
This is the second time in two months that deputies have responded to a report of an unsupervised child in Chelsea.
Read said last month, deputies responded to a similar case on Ferry Road and Route 9.
“It was the same situation, but a different location,” he said. “It’s kind of an unusual situation.”
Jessica Lowell — 621-5632
Twitter: @JLowellKJ
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