'A Christmas miracle:' Mayor says Florida siblings, ages 6, 5, found safe after Amber Alert issued

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Two siblings, ages 6 and 5, last seen playing outside on Sunday, Dec. 15 in Jacksonville, Florida were found safe Tuesday, Dec. 17, according to the mayor of Jacksonville.

Sources told WJXT they were found in the woods near the mobile home park where they went missing.

Earlier Tuesday, investigators said they were looking for a white vehicle that played loud music from the cartoon "Spongebob Squarepants" -- seen in the area around the time the siblings disappeared.

An Amber Alert was issued for Braxton Williams, 6, and his sister, Bri'ya Williams, 5.

Their father was the last to see the siblings, who were playing outside as he set up a barbecue next to their mobile home. He noticed they were gone and called 911.

Drones, dive teams, and volunteers were involved in the search -- combing the surrounding areas, with everyone hoping the children simply wandered off.

"Obviously retention ponds, we've got a dive presence in those areas," said Jacksonville Sheriff Michael Williams on Tuesday. "Using sonar, using drones, heavily wooded areas, especially to the north, I believe it is. We're doing a lot searching in that area, but abandoned cars. There's a significant number of abandoned trailers in this complex that we're looking at, so again, they're 5 and 6 so if they did walk away, think about that, but anything in the area that would attract children potentially to play, any of those things. We're looking at manhole covers. We're looking at lift stations. I mean, so anything you can think of, we've at least touched it once already, and we're expanding that now as we speak, so we're not even going to talk about when we give up right now because we're actively engaged in the search, so when we run out of every single lead, then we'll reevaluate where we go from there, but right now, I mean, our focus is pulling out all of the stops, getting all the help we can, and making sure that we, you know, search this particular grid, and we're going to stay focused on that until we have some results."