In June 2018, a two-year-old girl named Charlee Campbell vanished from her grandparent’s home in the rural town of Lebanon Junction, Kentucky.
Charlee’s grandmother woke up to discover the front door open. Charlee, who has autism and is frequently non-verbal, was missing. So was her pet pit bull, Penny.
Authorities, search crews, bloodhounds and volunteers searched the massive wooded area for any sign of the little girl but had no luck.
36 hours after Charlee’s disappearance morphed into the talk of the town, a neighbor named Wayne Brown was sitting on his couch, praying she’d be found safe.
Just then, Wayne saw someone standing in his yard — a tiny blonde-haired girl…
2-year-old Charlee Campbell, lovingly nicknamed “Mo.”
He jumped up ran to the door as she neared the porch.
“Are you Charlee?!” he asked her.
She didn’t say a word. She was dirty, with leaves in her hair and ticks on her body. And then Wayne noticed her “Frozen” shirt.
Wayne called authorities right away.
The discovery left an earth-shattering impression on Wayne. When he was eight years old, his little brother went missing. “He had wandered away from the home and he had climbed three fences,” he told the Courier-Journal. They found him a few miles away from the house. It was actually my uncle that discovered him and he was dead.”
Wayne praised and thanked God Charlee didn’t meet the same fate.
But the story took an even more surprising turn.
Just minutes before Charlee showed up on Wayne’s property, her family pit bull Penny had returned back home to Beth.
Beth believes Penny stayed by Charlee’s side the entire time she was missing, ensuring that she was safe.
“This is our hero right here,” Beth said of Penny.
Remember when Wayne said Charlee didn’t speak when he stumbled upon her? That wasn’t entirely true.
Charlee said one thing; she pointed to Wayne’s dog and said, “Puppy.”
“We cannot thank enough the firefighters, EMT’s, dispatchers, search teams, other public safety agencies and the volunteer searchers from the community.”
