A homeless man’s call to police on Monday morning ended an hours-long search for a Louisiana infant who was kidnapped and then abandoned underneath a highway overpass, according to multiple reports.
Authorities in Shreveport were called Monday morning by a homeless man who said that another man told him he had left a baby under a bridge in Minden, about 30 miles east of Shreveport, KTBS reported.
The child and a man identified by authorities as 25-year-old Kyshaun Wilson had been reported missing around 3:30 a.m. Monday after Wilson left a home in Minden with the 2 1/2-month-old boy, according to the news station. KTBS described Wilson as a friend of the family who lived at the home on Columbia Street, but KSLA reported that he was not a blood relative to the boy.
He was visiting the home on Sunday night and got up around midnight Monday to get the infant a bottle, according to KTBS.
“For some reason unknown at this time, he walks out with the baby,” Minden police Chief Steve Cropper told the news station.
Investigators told KSLA that Wilson walked for miles before he left the baby under an overpass on Interstate 20 around 3 a.m. He got a ride to Shreveport and went to Sam's Town Hotel and Casino, where he met a homeless man and confessed to leaving the infant, the news station reported.
The homeless man, who was not identified, called police, who were able to find Wilson.
Wilson initially denied any knowledge of the missing child, but later admitted that he had left him under the overpass, the Minden Press-Herald reported.
Police found the child wrapped in a blanket and sleeping underneath the Sibley exit bridge, according to KTBS and The Press-Herald.
"The scariest thing about it -- if he were able to roll off that ledge, he would have hit that concrete retaining ledge and probably would have rolled right out into interstate," Cropper told the Press-Herald.
However, he told KTBS, "the child was fine. He had only a few minor abrasions."
The baby has since been released to his mother.
Cropper told the Press-Herald that Wilson was arrested on one count of aggravated kidnapping.
As authorities took him to police headquarters, Wilson said that "God told me to do it," according to the Press-Herald.
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