“Somebody heard the muffled sounds of the kids under the snow and they were digging them out, and then people were screaming for shovels and they dug these young boys out,” one eyewitness told TV station WCBS New York.
The incident happened in the New York suburb of Newburgh, which on Wednesday was hit by more than six inches of snow. Police told the NBC that the identity of the snow plough operator was still unknown, but that the operator “would not have had any idea that the two boys were trapped underneath the snow.”
According to NBC the boys, who are cousins, went out to play on Wednesday evening to build a snow fort from a pile of snow in the parking lot across from one of their homes. One of their mothers went out to look for the boys at around 10pm after they failed to return home, and then called the police to report them missing.
The boys were freed at around 2am Thursday, when a police officer searching the area saw part of a shovel in the snow bank created by the snow plough, started digging, and saw one of the boy’ boots. Police and members of the community freed the boys, who were then taken to hospital suffering from exposure. They are reported to have already been released from hospital after recovering from their ordeal.
