A brief, moving video of an Illinois police officer helping a woman with intellectual disabilities has gone viral since being posted online Saturday.
The 42 seconds of footage shows the member of the Bloomingdale Police Department, identified only as Officer Giovenco, walking hand-in-hand with the 21-year-old woman on a tree-lined sidewalk.
Police responded Friday to a report that the woman had wandered away from her home, according to a description of the encounter provided by the department. They found her walking along a roadway.
“She was visibly scared and upset,” and initially refused to go with the officers, the statement said.
After Giovenco was able to calm her down, she told him that “she just wanted to walk the ‘trails,'” police said. The officer responded that he would walk with her.
She agreed to return to her home. Giovenco took her hand and escorted her, “which really seemed to put her at ease,” according to the statement.
In the video, which the department posted on its Facebook page, the uniformed officer is seen towering over the woman as they stroll toward their destination.
The widely shared clip has been viewed more than 460,000 times.