'Find my iPhone' app leads search party to missing student in Georgia

Jimmy Hubert&#039;s friends and family. — (Image credit: Twitter.com/RElliotWSB)

A missing Georgia Institute of Technology student was found Monday in a railroad ditch after his friends used a phone app to track him down.

Georgia Tech Police Chief Robert Connolly said in a statement that James "Jimmy" Hubert, a senior majoring in aerospace engineering, was last seen at 11 p.m. Friday after attending a sorority semi-formal function near campus in Atlanta. His worried friends started searching for him over the weekend and started the Twitter hashtag #bringjimmyhome. Eventually they determined that his date had left her smartphone in his pocket, and used an app to trace the phone's location. They found Hubert in a ditch early Monday about 7 miles away from campus and a few blocks from a commuter rail station, friend Emma Jeffrey told WSB-TV.

Hubert was disoriented and bruised, Jeffrey said, and he told his friends he had been beaten up by a group of homeless men. Because of his injuries, investigators have not had the chance to interview him yet. Connolly praised the search party for "not giving up on their friend."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.