Missing Boy Is Found Safe in Parking Lot : Search: Jesse Salazar, 2, wandered from an Easter carnival, launching a 16-hour hunt. Police are investigating.

A 2-year-old boy missing for 16 hours after disappearing from an Easter carnival at a Sunland park was found Monday morning wandering in a Panorama City parking lot about 10 miles away, Los Angeles police said.

Jesse Salazar of Panorama City was found unharmed and was reunited with his mother and father at Sunland Park at about 10:15 a.m.

The boy was immediately surrounded by a crush of relatives and the media. Several relatives cried as they kissed the boy and called, “Hi, Jesse! Hi, Jesse!”

Though it is unlikely that the boy walked from Sunland to the 8400 block of Van Nuys Boulevard in Panorama City, police stopped short of calling Jesse’s disappearance a kidnaping and on Monday were still investigating the incident.

Los Angeles Police Capt. Tim McBride said detectives were investigating a report that Jesse had been seen earlier with a group of people at the shopping center where he was found. But it was unclear whether the group, which police said was believed to have been a family, had taken the boy from the park or had found him wandering alone and taken care of him.

The family has not been located, and police said the boy is too young to tell them what happened. Police have ruled out any dispute involving the Salazars as a motive for kidnaping.

“We don’t know what we have,” McBride said. “It is hard to tell what he has been through. As far as the people he was with . . . they might be involved in a kidnap or they might have been good Samaritans. They could have gotten scared that they would be accused of kidnaping and left the boy.”

Jesse disappeared about 5:30 p.m. Sunday, shortly after he arrived with his parents, Patricia and Jesse Salazar Sr., both 19, at the park in the 8600 block of Foothill Boulevard, police said. The family intended to have a picnic and attend the park’s Easter carnival.

“They were just on an Easter outing,” McBride said. “As the mother and father were unloading things from the car, the boy got excited and ran over to the carnival. He disappeared.”

Police were called about 7 p.m. and an intensive search followed. Family members, more than 50 officers, several citizens and members of the Citizen Emergency Mobile Patrol searched the park and surrounding neighborhoods.

The search continued until Monday morning when Jesse was found wandering in front of a drug store by a person who had heard news reports about the missing boy. Police declined to identify the person who found the boy. Following his discovery, Jesse was given a medical checkup and it was determined he had not been harmed.

“I’m just very, very happy,” Jesse Salazar Sr. said as he waited with other family members at the park Monday morning after hearing that his son had been found.

As the Salazar family was reunited and relatives and the media crowded around the boy, the boy’s uncle, Marciano Salazar, stood behind the crowd.

“I feel like a 10-pound weight has been taken off my chest,” he said. “I spent all morning looking in dumpsters. Every time I lifted a lid . . . it was scary.”