Texas man gets left behind during family road trip

A Texas man found himself stranded in the middle of Tennessee during a road trip with his family. And he got out of the jam only after using Facebook to track down the van that had left him behind. The van was carrying his two children and was more than 100 miles away.

"Somebody had been sleeping all night in the back, and they were gonna drive and I was gonna get in the back and sleep," the man, who refused to give his name, told KRISTV. "I went inside to get my change for the gas, and they thought I was already loaded up and closed all the doors and took off."

It sounds a bit like the plot to "Home Alone," but in this case the adult is left behind while his kids hit the road.

His first reaction was to call someone in the van. But he realized he'd left his phone inside the vehicle to charge. He called his own phone, but no one answered. After several tries, the phone started going immediately to voice mail.

That's when the man feared the worst and called police. He says they weren't much help. But employees at a nearby Memphis La Quinta Inn let him use their computers, where he logged in to Facebook.

"Facebook is actually how I was able to get ahold of somebody and get them to get hold of somebody so that we could find out what's going on," he said.

Despite the very strange circumstances, the man says he believes the whole incident was simply a huge misunderstanding.