MONTREAL–The Quebec provincial police officer emerged from the brush with purpose, like a fullback charging for the goal-line.
Tucked under Const. Patrick Sullivan's arm was a 1-year-old boy who had just survived a cold night alone in the woods.
The baby, allegedly abandoned by his father after midnight Sunday, had spent nearly 12 hours outside in rainy, five-degree weather wearing nothing but a T-shirt and a soggy diaper.
A police helicopter spotted the child close to a road in Quebec's Eastern Townships at around noon Sunday.
Sullivan, who was already involved in the search, then scampered into the thick woodlot and reached the boy at about the same time as an officer who was being lowered from the chopper on a cable.
The boy, who still doesn't walk, was holding out his arms as though he wanted to be picked up when Sullivan located him in the underbrush. The officer wrapped him in a thermal blanket.
"I took him in my arms and I didn't let go until I got to the ambulance," said Sullivan, 33, himself the father of a 2-month-old boy.
Sullivan said he ran as fast as he could for about 100 metres through the forest with the baby cradled in his arms.
"In this child, I saw my own little guy abandoned, and I said, 'There's no way we're leaving this child freezing here all alone in the forest,' " he said.
"It was full throttle."
The seven-year police veteran said he was relieved to see that the baby was, except for mild frostbite on his cheeks, quite healthy.
"I had doubts about his condition," he said. "I wasn't expecting a healthy little guy – I was expecting him to be dead.
"It's a miracle that baby is still alive."
With a provincial police teddy bear in hand, the boy barely cried during the ambulance ride to the hospital, Sullivan said.
He was scheduled to be released from hospital Monday into his mother's care.
The rescue ended a frantic police operation that saw officers, a K-9 unit and the helicopter scour large swaths of forest for several hours.
The child's mother first phoned police at 12:30 a.m. Sunday to report that the boy's father had taken off in a car with the baby.
Shortly before 1 a.m., police received a 911 call that a vehicle had driven off a road near Ste-Anne-de-la-Rochelle, about 120 kilometres east of Montreal.
When police arrived at the scene, the car belonging to the boy's 34-year-old father was in a ditch, but he and the child were gone.
Police allege the man hit the pavement on foot, with the boy in his arms.
At around 7 a.m., a woman picked up the father, who was hitchhiking by himself, police said. The man, who suffered minor injuries in the accident, told her he needed a lift to hospital.
But when the woman stopped at a friend's house along the way, the man allegedly pushed her out of the car and drove off.
"He was thinking that she wasn't going fast enough," said provincial police spokesman Louis-Philippe Ruel.
Officers caught up with the man after he arrived at hospital in Cowansville, Ruel added.
The boy was found about a kilometre from the crash site.
His father was arraigned on Monday in nearby Granby on charges of robbery and criminal negligence.
He was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation to see if he's fit for trial and is expected back in court next Monday.