MOUNT VERNON (WABC) -- A 6-year-old boy with autism is back with his family in Westchester County after he was found driving a motorized toy car on the Bronx River Parkway over the weekend.
Officers found the boy on the mini ATV just after 7 p.m. Sunday in Mount Vernon.
"We just blocked it in, was like a box and he was right in the middle," said Ana Rubio, a Good Samaritan.
Ana Rubio still gets emotional as she speaks about the little boy she held in her arms, along the Bronx River Parkway Sunday night.
"He was like, 'I need to go home, mom, mom,' all he kept saying was 'mom,'" Rubio said.
Rubio didn't know the child but thank goodness she and several others including her husband, Joel, were there to help.
"The first guy who came in contact with the boy, he was almost shaking, he had goose bumps, saying, 'I almost hit the kid,'" said Joel Reyes, a Good Samaritan.
The Good Samaritans are now being called angels.
Investigators say several drivers slowed down to block the child from other traffic.
They spotted the 6-year-old little boy, riding a toy ATV on the Bronx River Parkway, in the far right lane with cars whizzing by, going at least 45 mph.
"It seemed like the child wanted to continue driving, he was trying to merge on the middle lane of the highway," Rubio said.
This twisted tale began roughly two miles from the parkway.
Police say the little boy, who is autistic, was with his grandmother near a park on South 7th Avenue.
He slipped away, got on his blue battery powered toy, and took off.
Witnesses say the boy's mother showed up at the park and frantically start calling for her son.
"You saw kids going back and forth and I asked them 'Did you find him?' and they said 'No,'" said Genoveva Burgos, a witness.
The boy was heading to the parkway, and it's a long journey for such a little guy.
As his mother was reporting him missing, police began getting a ton of 911 calls about a boy on an ATV on the parkway.
By then, Rubio and several others had safely gotten the 6-year-old to the side of the parkway.
"It seemed like he didn't know he was on a highway, he just wanted to go home," Rubio said.
Then her heart skipped another beat.
"When he saw the police officer he was ready to run onto the highway but I grabbed him and hugged him and said, 'we're going to help you, the officer will take you home,'" Rubio said.
The boy was taken to a hospital for observation and found to be OK.