Missing Boy Billy Hanson Found: Niue Island In South Pacific Was Abducted Boy’s New Home

Missing boy Billy Hanson has been found. Niue Island became home to a 9-year-old boy after his non-custodial father abducted him and transported them both to the South Pacific to start a new life. Now the missing boy has been found alive, after authorities tracked him and his father all the way from Seattle, Washington, to a remote island in the South Pacific Ocean.

Thankfully, the missing boy, Billy Hanson, was found safe on Niue Island. Finding a little boy 5,500 miles from home on one of 1,000 Polynesian islands must have been akin to finding a needle in a haystack. The boy and his father arrived at the island via the man’s 1976 White Cooper sailboat after 46-year-old Jeffrey Ford Hanson abducted the child during a routing summer visit. Fortunately, friends and family members were able to alert authorities that Hanson took the boy to Seattle’s Shilshole Marina to transport the boy out of the country, reported Q13.

When Billy Hanson failed to board an airplane bound for his mother’s home in Pennsylvania, where he was supposed to start school in the Hazleton Area School District in September, she alerted authorities. A federal arrest warrant was issued by the U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington for the elder Hanson. Authorities charged the man with international parental kidnapping.

Billy Hanson’s father is expected to face extradition and be brought back to the United States, where he will answer to charges for the case of the missing boy found on Niue Island. He is currently in custody in Niue. In the meantime, the Seattle Police Major Crimes Task Force, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the F.B.I are working together to complete the extradition process. The F.B.I. plans to return the child to his mother in Pennsylvania.

As previously reported by the Inquisitr, 10-year-old Alexandra Greenwall was reported missing after a “heated argument” with her mother. The child was last seen on Wednesday night around 10 p.m. On Thursday morning, her mother realized that she had packed two bags with clothes and left the family home via a back door. One of those bags was discovered on the road near the home. Fortunately, Greenwall returned home safely on Saturday around 7 p.m. Police have not released details regarding her whereabouts during the time that she was missing from her home.

Do you think it’s amazing that the boy, Billy Hanson, was found on Niue Island, thousands of miles away from home, when so many missing children are never located at all? Comments are welcome.

[Image via Q13 FOX]