11-year-old takes car, drives hours to meet man from Snapchat

(CNN) – An 11-year-old boy is back home in South Carolina, after driving 200 miles alone in his brother’s car.

Police say the boy went to meet a man he met on social media.

“He was he was lost. He didn’t know where he was going,” said Charleston Police Chief Luther Reynolds.

The 11-year-old driver on a three-hour trip pulls over randomly into a restaurant parking lot early Monday morning.

A police cruiser is there.

“And he needed help and also Braun was in the right place at the right time,” said Reynolds.

The boy shakes hands with the officer. Within twenty-three minutes from the initial meeting the child gets into the cruiser.

The boy told police he was from Simpsonville.

He said he took his brother’s car and drove 200 miles to meet a man from Snapchat.

He said he was going to live with him.

Now, Chief Luther Reynolds has a message to parents about social media and their kids.

“We’d love tonight right now, anybody who’s watching this who’s a parent of a child, especially an 11-year-old, to sit down with your 11-year-old right now, right this moment and have a conversation about what you’re doing on social media, the dangers, the benefits and things that as a parent we need to talk about every day,” he said.

Police believe the boy used his father’s tablet to figure out the directions to Charleston, but then lost the signal.

Officers called his family just as his father was preparing to report a missing child.

The incident is still under investigation.