PARK CITY, Utah — On Sunday afternoon, a 5-year-old went missing for over an hour while at a ski lesson at Deer Valley. His parents are still trying to make sense of what happened and are upset with how authorities handled the search.
FOX 13 News received a video from the Persson family after they found their 5-year-old son. In the video, he is heard saying that no one helped him and he was scared.
“It’s been very stressful, to be honest," said Karl Persson, the boy's dad. "The main thing is that we are really really just blessed that our son is still here because this could have been terrible."
Persson's kids were at ski school at Deer Valley on Sunday when he and his wife ran into their son’s instructor, who said he was missing.
They still don’t know how long exactly he was missing for.
“The best we can put together is that he was missing for around 100 minutes, which is a really long time for a parent, as you can imagine,” said Persson.
Their main concern with all this was that ski patrol and police were not notified that their son was missing.
“They notified their ski school chain of command, and they had eight people looking for him, but never called ski patrol, never called police to ensure there wasn’t a kidnapping," Persson said.
Persson said he hasn’t heard from Deer Valley since Tuesday, when resort president Todd Bennett called him. He has been trying to reach out since then.
FOX 13 News reached out to the resort for an interview Friday morning. They declined an interview, but they did provide the following statement statement:
“On Sunday afternoon February 12, 2023, a child became separated from his instructor and ski school class on Deer Valley’s Flagstaff Mountain. The child was found safe and uninjured by guests and our staff who helped reunite this child with his family. A student being separated from their instructor is something we take seriously. We have specific protocols in place to communicate with on mountain staff to coordinate a search and locate the student as quickly as possible. We apologize for the distress this has caused to the child and his family and we are meeting with each of our instructors and mountain leaders to reinforce and review our existing training and procedures.”
Persson says that response is just not enough.
“Nobody’s ever apologized to us, or never even expressed empathy or asked about the well-being of my child,” he said.
Persson says his son is still dealing with the trauma of what happened — with a search that they believe was not taken as seriously as it should have been.
“My son is OK — physically he’s fine. I think there’s some trauma from the incident, but we’re working through that," Persson said. "He says he doesn’t want to ski, which is concerning if you live in a ski town, but we’re just very thankful to have him home with us."
The boy had become stuck in a tree well, where he took off his skis and climbed out of the snow. A couple then found him and helped him back to his family.
“He’s a hero, in my opinion," his dad said. "Really sort of takes it on himself to get himself out and I think that’s absolutely commendable."
Persson hopes that sharing their story brings some change, so no child or family has to go through this again.
“They should have GPS devices on all kids," he said. "Other ski resorts in North America have that, and I think that they probably should revise their polices overall, provide better training and provide walkie-talkies. The instructors didn’t even have ways of communicating with each other.”
