Police find missing boy hours after he left Cecil Intermediate School

CECIL TOWNSHIP, Pa. — A sixth-grader who was last seen leaving Cecil Intermediate School Thursday morning was found over six miles away in Peters Township that evening. There are a lot of unanswered questions about exactly how he got there.

The family of a missing 11-year-old got the news that their child had been found safely, nearly eight hours after he reportedly left Cecil Intermediate School at 9:20 Thursday morning.

Cecil Township police say the Canon-McMillan School District let them know that the student was missing after 2 p.m. Officers immediately started a massive search for the sixth-grader.

“I don’t know how he came all the way to here,” Abeer Kronawetter said.

Kronawetter, who owns the Peters Township Firehouse Subs, says the 11-year-old made his way into her store after lunch Thursday.

“So he asked my daughter can we have water here and she said yeah so she gave him the water cup I saw him in the lobby getting his water cup and he left,” Kronawetter added.

She says school-aged children will often come in around lunchtime and ask for water, so it didn’t set off any alarms to her that there was a problem.

“We’re used to seeing that. So it wasn’t strange for us when we saw it. If I knew I would’ve grabbed him,” Kronawetter said.

Over three hours later, the missing boy’s mother came into her store asking if she’d seen her son.

The mother asked if the business would post the boy’s picture and information, which they did on the outside door.

Authorities haven’t said how or why he ended up along Gallery Drive in McMurray. After several reported sightings of the boy along the Montour Trial Thursday afternoon, police found him after 5 o’clock at Peters Town Center.

Kronawetter said, “We saw the police activity around here. I don’t know how they got here or they knew that he came because that’s a long walk.”

Channel 11 reached out to Canon-McMillan School District for comment, but haven’t heard back.

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