Durango police drone locates missing boy near Animas River

A Durango police drone found a missing 12-year-old boy with autism playing dangerously close to the Animas River, turning a downtown wandering call into a quick river-edge rescue.

The boy had walked away from the Durango Mall and reached the water’s edge before Commander Nick Stasi, operating the drone, kept visual contact and directed officers to him. Officer Adam Coleman reached the boy safely and reunited him with his mother, ending the search without injury. The sequence moved fast: the drone launched from Durango Fire Protection District Station 2 at 6:11 p.m., reached the area behind the mall by 6:14 p.m., and appears to have spotted the boy near the river at 6:21 p.m. in released footage.

What makes the case stand out for Durango and the broader Four Corners recreation community is how quickly a familiar shopping corridor became a search-and-rescue zone. The Durango Mall sits close to the Animas River, and a child who wanders from storefronts or parking lots can reach moving water in minutes. For families with children who may bolt, including kids with autism, that geography raises the stakes immediately. In this case, the river was not a backdrop. It was the danger.

The drone was not just a one-time assist. Chief Brice Current later presented footage from the incident at a Kiwanis Club meeting as an example of how unpiloted aircraft can help officers search faster, cover more ground and find people sooner. Durango moved toward that model in February, when the city said drones would be part of a Drone-as-a-First-Responder program based at Fire Station 2 downtown. City officials said the drones could launch within 10 seconds of dispatch, reach most locations in under a minute and send real-time video to officers, firefighters and 911 dispatchers before first responders arrived.

The timing matters because Durango police typically average 6 to 8 minutes to reach a call, a gap that can feel long when a vulnerable child is near the Animas River. In this case, the drone compressed the search window and put officers on the boy’s exact location while he was still at the water’s edge. For a river town that lives with recreation, shopping and emergency response side by side, the rescue showed how quickly those worlds can collide, and how much difference a few minutes and a camera in the sky can make.