After mom died in crash, toddlers survived for days in stifling heat, Arkansas police say

A scratched-up 3-year-old boy was wandering near a roadway early Monday morning when someone saw the toddler all by himself, the Ouachita County Sheriff’s Department said in a news release.

Deputies responded to the scene on Arkansas State Highway 24, near a grocery store, and saw that the boy “had several scratches and cuts throughout his body,” but he seemed healthy.

Not knowing who the boy was, the Sheriff’s Department posted a photo of him to Facebook and asked for help identifying him or his parents. The photo has since been deleted, but FOX16 published a photo of the boy in a red shirt with a cut on his lip.

After posting the photo, deputies learned that family members had not seen the toddler, his younger brother or the boys’ mom for a few days, the report said.

Deputies went back to the scene, according to the release, and they found that there had been a car crash off the highway.

A vehicle was found “in a deep ravine” that could not be seen from the road, deputies said. The car was on its side, and a woman was found dead.

“It appeared that the female had been ejected from the vehicle,” the release said. That woman has since been identified as 25-year-old Lisa Holliman and the mom of the 3-year-old who was wandering near the road.

Then police found her 1-year-old son still fastened in his car seat — and he was “awake and alert,” deputies said. He was taken to a hospital, and now both children have been turned over to family members, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

KARK reported that both boys suffered from dehydration, but they are OK.

While the Sheriff’s Office does not know for sure when the crash occurred, deputies believe it might have happened as far back as Aug. 16, according to the release. That’s four days before the children were found alive.

That is nothing “short of a miracle,” Lt. Nathan Greeley said in the release. “If it had not been for the three year old child being able to escape the car wreckage and finding his was back to the roadway, it could have easily been three deaths.”

But Holliman’s dad, James Holliman, told KARK that Lisa was not the only one to die in the crash.

“We just found that out at the hospital that she was pregnant,” he told the station. “We didn’t know. We lost two.”

In a “personal note” section of the news release, Greeley wrote that Monday was a tragic day with a “roller coaster of emotions.”

He told KATV the children survived in south Arkansas elements that included heat, humidity and rain. Greeley also said temperatures hit into the 90s, according to the Associated Press. 

“The three year old is HEROIC in my eyes, he saved his brother’s life,” Greeley said in the release. “God was by their side the entire time and allowed them to survive,” Greeley wrote.

This story was originally published August 21, 2018 at 4:06 PM with the headline "After mom died in crash, toddlers survived for days in stifling heat, Arkansas police say."