Happy ending: Florida deputies find little girl who wandered away from home

WALTON COUNTY, Fla. (WALA) -- A sigh of relief for a Walton County family and the deputies who spent some of Tuesday searching a wooded area of DeFuniak Springs for a runaway 4-year-old girl.

It's a call that typically makes Deputy Damon Byrd's heart sink. A frantic mother alerted the Walton County Sheriff's Office that her four-year-old little girl, Alva Chapman, had gone missing from her front yard off of Rock Hill Road.

Walton County Deputy Damon Byrd said, "So we got on scene, found a couple of footprints leading up the driveway."

Byrd, who's is a K-9 supervisor with the Walton County Sheriff's Office got right to work. He said the county's department of corrections sent in one of their bloodhounds who picked up Alva's scent right away.

"I took the child's teddy bear and pillowcase, sealed it in a bag, and then, where we found that initial footprint, I dropped those items, let the bloodhounds smell it, establish that scent and the hound knew that scent was what we were looking for. Luckily, the hound whose name was Lulu took us right to her," said Byrd.