Temple police activated a reverse 911 call to residents and businesses within a quarter-mile radius of the First Baptist Church where Joshua Engelbricht was last seen at about 12:20 p.m.
A Texas Department of Public Safety helicopter out of Waco was also sent up, with a Temple officer aboard, concentrating its search in the northwest part of the city where Engelbricht has gone before, ostensibly trying to get to Crawford where his father lives.
Engelbricht is a resident of the Educare group home on Little Flock Road. When it was determined he was missing, police set up a command center at the corner of Calhoun Avenue and First Street.
“Due to his limited capacity for personal care we’re doing everything possible to find this young man as soon as we can,” Sgt. Brad Hunt, Temple Police Department public information officer, said during the search.
For 3 1/2 hours, Hunt said, there were consistently six to 10 police units searching for Engelbricht.
Just after 7 p.m. the reverse 911 system called 1,532 people.
At 7:40 p.m. police received a call from an Educare nurse who had found Engelbricht at Wal-Mart. Within five minutes of the report police escorted Engelbricht to his home.
“It’s a relief that he was found safe and secure,” Hunt said. “We didn’t have to be out here looking for 24 hours, so we feel like the search went relatively quickly considering that the whole city was our scope.”
Hunt said there would be a follow up investigation.
“There will probably be some discussion into how not to let this kind of thing happen again,” he said. “But (Engelbricht) does live in a group home, so we are going to try and help them to not have to go through this same thing again.
“The end result is that we’re very happy that he is OK, that he was found. So we at the police department feel like it was a big success.”
