A boy searching for food and water got stuck in a chimney at a home in Utah. Richard and Sandy Draper said they were returning to their home  around 7:30 p.m. Friday when they heard someone yelling. The couple originally thought the yelling was children playing in the backyard, but discovered that the noise was coming from 8-year-old Stephen Hopkins, who was stuck in their chimney. Continue reading after the jump.
“I could hear a voice in my chimney and I said, ‘Are you in the chimney,'” said Sandy Draper.
A wall had to be ripped out of the home to let Hopkins out.
“Through a noble effort of about and hour of cutting our house up…they were able to retrieve the child and overall everything was successful,” said Richard Draper. “He was black, just covered in soot but actually looked pretty well.”
West Valley City police say Hopkins had been reported missing by his mother earlier in the day after he left his home and didn’t return.
“‘That’s when they got a call in the other neighborhood that there was a boy stuck in the fireplace named ‘Steve’,” said Janine Hopkins, Stephen’s mother. I said that’s my Steve, I know it is.”
Hopkins was reportedly looking for food and water when he climbed up the Drapers’ apricot tree, went down the chimney and got stuck for between 4 and 6 hours. He’d managed to slide down to the basement of the home, near the flue.
“They asked him why he had gone down the chimney and he said he was looking for food and water so evidently he was wandering the neighborhood,” said Richard Draper.
Hopkins only suffered minor injuries. There is no estimate on how much damage was done to the home.
