Lexis Walker

ALLEGHENY TWP — Home more than 36 hours after she ran away , 15-year-old Lexis Walker said she left home because she was scared of being punished, and spent nearly two days in the woods trying to stay warm, avoid being found, and trying to walk to the Slippery Rock area home of an ex-boyfriend.

Nearly 48 hours ago, Lexis says, this all started with something seemingly innocuous: an errant horseshoe toss that ended up lost in the water behind her house.

Not so innocuous to her, Lexis said. Upset about losing the horseshoe, she'd searched for what seemed like a long time. When she ended up losing a magnetic stick belonging to her stepfather, Mark Durnell, Lexis said she felt like she was in big trouble.

“I'm a sensitive person, and I didn't want to get in trouble,” she said. “I just got so scared and wanted to run off — (I) thought it might be better that way.”

Walker turned up at the family's Locust Lane home Wednesday morning, and said she decided to come back because she got homesick and couldn't find her way in the forest.

Walker's stepfather, Mark, and mother, April, said they struggled with fears that Lexis was dead after she left a cryptically-worded note behind, promising that they would "find me soon enough."

“With those words, you think about the best, but you also think about the worst,” he said.

April Walker's mind went there too. The longer the search stretched on, the more desperate she felt.

“I feared the worst. I thought we would find her dead body,” Walker said.

Instead, on Wednesday morning the couple found Lexis on their front porch after returning home to meet state police and hand over a phone and iPad Lexis shares with her twin brother, Levi.

For Mark Durnell and April Walker, the experience was a harrowing one. But it has also revealed the character of a community they were still only just getting to know. The couple said they never expected so many volunteers or such dedication to finding and bringing Lexis home. The family says they intend to throw a party to thank all those involved in the effort.

“They never stopped. Never,” April Walker said.