PORTLAND, Ore. -- A juvenile judge has decided to keep 2-year-old River Schomaker in protective custody, and ordered his mother into drug treatment.
Schomaker is the toddler who wandered out of his Northeast 67th Avenue home Saturday and was found alive in a tangle of blackberry bushes a block away.
The boy's mother, 27-year-old Hollian Markusen, cried in court as she agreed to go into a drug treatment facility. The Department of Human Services said "implements dangerous to River have now been removed from the home."
Portland police said Schomaker is doing much better and the judge ordered the boy to finally have a visit with his parents Wednesday, whom he hasn't seen since his disappearance over the weekend.
Officer Daniel Tatro, a 9-year veteran of Portland police, was directing traffic around the search perimeter Saturday, when a Mountain Wave Search and Rescue K-9 and her handler found the boy in thick blackberry bushes.
"I could see her wave me down rather frantically, she told me they had located River's body," Tatro recalled during a press conference.
Tatro grabbed River up, and saw that he was breathing.
"I could see his left arm rising and falling with his breath and I think I even got on the radio and said he was breathing and crying, and that was great news, because that was the first time I had seen he was still alive. I could see the blackberry bushes were intertwined around his legs, there was a thick vine that was stuck around his right shoulder."
Police now believe River had been outside alone for probably 11 hours. He was hypothermic and disoriented which could explain why he would go into thicker bushes.
"River was initially crying there and as I lifted him out he just clung to me," Tatro said. "You could tell he was very weak and cold to the touch. He just had on a long sleeve t-shirt that was soaking wet and a diaper."
Sky 8 video: Missing 2-year-old boy River found
Tatro put his coat around the boy whose legs were bright red and covered in scratches. Tatro waited in a patrol car with the heater turned on full blast with the boy until the ambulance arrived.
Police say there's no foul play involved, River simply slipped out his front door while Markusen may have been asleep. She didn't call 911 until 6 a.m. But police believe River probably got out around 11 p.m. or midnight.
Officers determined an alleged drug problem was enough to temporarily place River in a foster home, and DHS now agrees. Tatro, a father to foster kids himself, said he was meant to be there to help.
"You think of your own kids in a time like that, and what River must have gone through when he was stuck in those blackberry bushes, you feel really bad for him, so you do everything you can to make him feel loved."