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Rescue team plucks boy, 4, from deadly mudslide

Amazing video from the helicopter rescue team shows the precise moment a 4-year-old boy was plucked from the deadly Washington state mudslide.

Even with his father and siblings still trapped inside their home, Jacob Spillers didn’t panic Saturday as a crew worked to free him from the mud that had swallowed most of his house.

A camera attached to the Snohomish County rescue helicopter captured the moment when Jacob was pulled from quicksand-like muck just a couple hours after the disaster struck.

“He didn’t cry,” Ed Hrivnak, the team’s volunteer pilot, told CNN. “He didn’t move. He just stood there and was a very composed little man.”

“That little guy was very brave,” crew chief Beau Beckner wrote on the rescue team’s Facebook page.

Tragically, his sisters, Kaylee, 5, Brooke, 2, and his 13-year-old stepbrother, Jovon Mangual, were still missing, along with his dad, Billy Spillers.

The boy’s mother, Jonielle, a nursing assistant, was at work when she learned of the catastrophe and later found Jacob by calling hospitals.

Jacob’s rescue was one of the few bright spots in the search and recovery mission, although officials continue to cling to hope of finding others alive.

With cadaver dogs leading the way, rescuers using bulldozers and their bare hands dug through sludge strewn with splintered homes and twisted cars to find 10 more bodies in the debris — bringing the likely number of dead to 24, authorities said.

“We haven’t lost hope that there’s a possibility that we can find somebody alive in some pocket area,” said District 21 Fire Chief Travis Hots.

Two bodies were recovered Tuesday, while eight more were located in the debris field from Saturday’s slide 55 miles northeast of Seattle, Hots said.

With scores still missing, authorities are working off a list of 90 people unaccounted for, although some names were believed to be duplicates.

Among the victims rescued was Buddy, a chocolate Labrador retriever left at home while his owners went to a baseball game.

Jacob Miller, 4 (bottom row, second from left), was rescued from the deadly Washington State mudslide — but still missing are his siblings (from left) Kaylee, 5, Brooke, 2, Jovon Mangual, 13, and dad Billy Spillers. Jonielle Spiller, right, was at work when the slide happened and is alive.