Police say something doesn't add up after missing child found 9 hours later

Cries coming from a wooded area led neighbors Thursday to an 11-month-old boy who had been missing for more than nine hours, according to witnesses.

Police and the FBI worked for hours to find 11-month-old Durante Cochran in Atlanta.

The mother of the child is now in jail.

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Atlanta police said officers were in the 1400 block of Beecher Street looking for the child overnight Wednesday. Durante was last seen with relatives in southwest Atlanta.

Police were not sure whether the child wandered out of the house or was kidnapped. Atlanta police said the family told police that they put the baby to sleep on the couch in the living room at 9 p.m. Wednesday.

Police said the family awakened two hours later to find the front door open and the baby gone.

Ten hours after Durante disappeared, Atlanta police found the 11-month-old uninjured in a wooded driveway, just a block from the Beecher Street home where he'd slept the night before.

A contractor and a neighbor heard the child crying. Authorities said the story isn't adding up.

"It's sort of unbelievable that he would have walked or crawled," said Atlanta police Maj. Adam Lee III.

K-9 units searched the area around the house. Investigators said they went door to door in a two-block radius searching for the missing child.

Lee said he has his doubts that the child was in the same spot the whole time.

“I just know those dogs are very good at what they do," he said. "I just have my doubts."

Searchers came out of the woods covered in mosquito bites, but the baby didn't have even one. APD is investigating whether he was dropped off in the woods after he disappeared.

WSBTV's Nicole Carr learned that during questioning of several children and adults who were in the home when the child disappeared, the baby's parents were also called in. Atlanta police discovered that Durante's mother had an outstanding arrest warrant.

"She had a FTA warrant for failure to appear for child neglect. So we arrested her along with another individual, a man who was also in the house, that had a probation violation for drug-related charges," Lee said.

Police said neither she nor Durante's father were staying in the Beecher street home when he vanished. That house did not have electricity and was running off a generator.

It's also unclear who had legal custody of the child.

The baby has been checked out of the hospital and is said to be fine. He's now in state custody.

Details confirming his mother's identity and child neglect charges were not immediately available Thursday afternoon.

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