Boy Next In Line for Heart Transplant Kidnapped From Hospital...Found Safe

ST. LOUIS (The Blaze/AP) -- A five-year-old transplant patient was next in line on the waiting list when he was taken from a St. Louis hospital by his father -- who did not have custody of the child -- Tuesday has since been found safe just outside Chicago, authorities said.

Porter Stone was found at a different hospital in Alsip, Ill, that his father, 33-year-old Jeffrey Stone, brought him to following the incident. According to a police dispatcher there, who declined to give her name because she wasn't authorized to talk to the news media, the father is currently in custody.

A missing child alert was issued after the boy was taken from the hospital Tuesday. St. Louis police Capt. Jim Moran told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch the boy's father didn't have legal custody.

Porter was being treated for cardiomyopathy, a thickening of the heart muscle.

Dr. F. Sessions Cole, the chief medical officer at St. Louis Children's Hospital, told KSDK-TV Porter's condition is serious and he only had about a day's worth of medication left in a portable IV when he was taken. KSDK also reports Jeffrey's mother, Rhonda Matthews, was with him during the abduction.

According to relatives, Jeffery Stone is estranged from the boy's mother, Tiffany Stone, who has legal custody of Porter.

Porter, who lives in St. Joseph in northwestern Missouri, was on the hospital's waiting list for a heart transplant. Cole said the boy was discharged after several days in the hospital so he could be monitored by doctors closer to home in the Kansas City area.

Police said Jeffery Stone took Porter and then called Tiffany Stone -- who was still at the hospital -- and told her he was taking the child.