On Saturday, a youngster who had been missing for more than a week in the city of Oldenburg, which is located in the northwest corner of Germany, was discovered in the sewage system of the city around a thousand feet from his family’s house.

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At around 6:30 in the morning, a local homeowner reported to authorities that they had heard sounds coming from behind a manhole cover.

The little youngster, who the authorities have given the name Joe, was discovered “totally nude” and “did not have any major exterior injuries,” but he was extremely hypothermic and dehydrated.

“After evaluating all traces and clues, the officers now assume that Joe crawled through a drain into the rainwater sewer system on the day of his disappearance and lost his orientation there after several metres,” Oldenburg police said Tuesday in a news release. “The officers now assume that Joe crawled through a drain into the rainwater sewer system on the day of his disappearance.”

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The authorities suspect that Joe got lost in the subterranean system on June 17 when he was playing and that he gained access to it by climbing through a drain pipe that was around three feet wide.

The surrounding region had been searched for many days by search groups, one of which had even sent a camera-equipped robot into the sewage system to look for the missing person.