In Virginia, the Stafford County Sheriff’s Office is crediting its UAS for helping to locate a missing high school student.

The student, an 18-year-old young man, was reported missing on Monday, September 18, around 5:00 p.m., after not returning home after school.

The student had no history of running away, and the Sheriff’s Office believed that he might be endangered.

After locating the student’s book bag and cell phone in the school, and after detectives spoke to associates of the student and learned that nobody had seen or heard from him since the end of the school day, there was a belief that the student might still be in the vicinity of the high school. So the Sheriff’s Office Search & Rescue Team, and the UAS team, were called out to help with the search.

The UAS was launched a little before 9:00 p.m., and by 9:30 p.m., the UAS, which was equipped with a thermal imaging camera, picked up a thermal image “believed to be that of the missing student in the far southwest portion of the school property near the track.”

Deputies were directed to that area by members of the UAS team, and the missing student was found unharmed.

For Stafford Sheriff D.P. Decatur, this success story is just another example of how beneficial this technology has been for the Sheriff’s Office.

“The drone has proven to be an invaluable tool for our agency,” Decatur says.

“Having the ability to search large areas of land from above in a short period of time for lost, missing and dangerous individuals has allowed us to provide another layer of safety to our citizens. I’m extremely happy that we were able to quickly locate and return this young man back to his family unharmed.”