Oneida (WSYR-TV) - As a family says goodbye to a mother and her 10-year old daughter - a police chief is praising the little boy who survived a crash in Oneida.....Ellen Caswell was returning from a day at camp with her two children when their jeep veered off of Fairview Avenue and hit a utility pole late Sunday night.....Strapped in his car seat, Caswell's 5-year old son wasn't hurt. But, young Kadyn Depasquale was suddenly alone and lost in the dark. By chance, he noticed his mother's cell phone and called his dad....."The phone actually illuminated as if someone was calling it," said Canastota Police Chief James Zophy. "He told his father that's how he found the phone because it had illuminated. It lit up and there was nobody on the phone."....Canastota Police James Zophy knows the story well because that little boy is his nephew.....As Depasquale's dad frantically drove around, searching for his 5-year old son, another relative reached out to Zophy hoping he could help trace the number of the cell phone to pinpoint a location. They shared all the information that Kadyn had told his dad......."He was somewhere in the woods and he was hiding in a bush because of snakes and that his mom and his sissy were killed in an accident and he didn't know where he was."....Kadyn wasn't in the woods. But, the crops in the field where his mother crashed were tall enough to confuse him.....He thought he could still see the camp where he spent the day, in the distance. But, it was miles away and his dad and emergency workers were headed to the wrong place.....911 dispatchers told the chief it would take too long to trace a number. Kadyn had to tell his worried father goodbye and call 911 on his own. They were both afraid to hang up because they weren't sure the phone would be able to make another call....."He knew that that phone was going to die. He told his dad, he said 'the red light is on dad. The phone is red,'" Zophy explained. "He really needed to convince his son to call 911 knowing how scared both of them were going to be."....The battery had enough power to make the connection. As Kadyn hid in a field - emergency workers traced the phone...telling him to listen for the horns of police cars nearby and to walk toward them. He found his way, just in time....."I walked up to Kadyn. He was holding the phone he was using. The phone battery was dead," Zophy recalled.....By the time his uncle arrive, the boy was in the back of a police car, suspecting that his mother and sister were gone.....He told Zophy, "If I wasn't in my car seat, I would be dead too." The chief said Kadyn expressed that he was grateful....."Now, I will tell you that that little boy had everything together. He was absolutely as strong as strong could be," he said.....Zophy stresses that he wanted to share a very personal story so other's would take notice of his nephew's quick response, likely because he'd been told what to do in an emergency.
