Andrew Tornabene was leaving his sister’s house, when he found himself being pulled in the wrong direction of where he was supposed to go. His gut told him to just keep going down that road. Seconds later, he looked over and saw something pink peeking out of the snow that looked familiar to him.
Rather than taking his normal route home that night, Andrew drove in a different direction. As he headed down that dark road in Lorain, Ohio, he instantly recalled a post he shared hours earlier on Facebook. Not thinking much about it at the time, it all came together when he saw who needed him.
Little 2-year-old Lana Lowther hadn’t been seen for four hours, and police were urging people not to go out and look for her, but to leave it up to the professionals.
Concerned citizens did anyway, unable to sleep knowing that a toddler was somewhere out there alone in the freezing cold, while wearing nothing but footie pajamas.
Andrew had shared the missing child alert before going to his sister’s house that night, but he never expected that he would be the one to find her.
“I was just hanging out at my sister’s house, and I was getting ready to leave and I decided to come the other way just to reroute and take a stroll and see if I could see her,” he told the news station. “And sure enough, as soon as I made the left on to Missouri from my sister’s house I seen her staggering on the corner by a bush and falling in the snow.”
Lana lifted her arms up and reached out for him when he saw her, so he scooped her up and placed her in his car, before calling police, WKYC reported. Neighbors wandered out of their houses in shock that the child they had seen on the news was in snowdrifts on their street all along. One man was moved to tears, seeing Andrew for who he was — a Godsend.
“The way our world is with the psychos today out here, you hope for the best but you never know,” Rich Revercomb said. “But to find her after this much time as little a girl as she is, I don’t know, in my opinion, it’s a miracle. I believe God was watching over her.”
The details surrounding how she meandered away from her home have not been released, while it’s under investigation. Lana’s mother, Amanda Lowther, said that she is grateful to this good Samaritan, who was an answer to the family’s prayers. As for Andrew, he doesn’t deny that he’s a hero, accepting the title when the news station asked if he felt like one. “I just happened to go outside and find her like it was nothing,” he added in his interview.
God led this man down that road, so that he was in the right place at the right time for a tiny stranger who couldn’t have survived those elements for much longer. This is a testament to always following your gut and being aware of your surroundings. We never think we’ll be the one to find the missing child or solve the crime, but we should remain open to that possibility so we don’t miss what’s right in front of us.
