West Virginia National Guard soldiers find missing person in Washington, DC

WASHINGTON, D.C. (WBOY) – Soldiers with the West Virginia National Guard who are deployed in Washington, D.C. helped find a missing autistic person at a Metro station over the weekend.

According to a release from the Defense Visual Information Service, soldiers were doing patrols at the Union Station Metro on Sept. 6 when they were informed by a security guard that a person was missing in the area. The initial report said that it was a missing child, but they later learned it was a missing adult with special needs who had been separated from their guardian.

1st Lt. Adam Park, with the West Virginia National Guard, and his soldiers found a person matching the description who appeared to be autistic. Park said in the release that he handed off his weapon, approached the person and was able to take them back to their guardian.

“I wanted to keep them as calm as possible while I interacted with them,” Park said in the release.

Park called the search “a good combined effort.”

“The security guard said he specifically wanted to find us because he knew that we had a lot of people,” Park said in the release. “So, it was a good combined effort, and we were able to quickly reunite the person with their guardian.”

Around 400 West Virginia National Guard soldiers are among the 2,300 National Guard members stationed in Washington, D.C. to support President Donald Trump’s “Safe and Beautiful” task force.

National Guard members from West Virginia have been in Washington since Aug. 19, assisting the task force with a goal of reducing crime in the city. The American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia (ACLU-WV) has filed a lawsuit to stop the deployment.