3-year-old reunited with his mother after AMBER Alert

The AMBER alert is over as a 3-year-old boy is back with his mother tonight - and the man accused of kidnapping him is in handcuffs.

It's a happy ending after hours of desperate searching on Detroit's west side.

A day-long manhunt for missing 3-year-old Marvie Gardner of Detroit ends with that little boy, safe, in the arms of his mother as his suspected kidnapper - 19-year-old Michael Grayson -- is taken away in cuffs.

"We prayed to God and he's looking out for us," said Antonio Ford, the boy's grandfather. "It's a rainy day, but he's saying these are tears of joy."

Detroit police say Grayson, an acquaintance of Marvie's mother, Latoya Spears, had an argument with his girlfriend at Spears' home on Winston late Wednesday night and his girlfriend left with their child.

That's when Spears said she woke up around 5:30 a.m. Thursday to find her 3-year-old gone, a knife missing and a cryptic note left behind.

"He left a note on the table," said Latoya Spears, Marvie's mother. "(It said) 'Get my baby, will contact. Done playing, let's play.'"

As a van also showed up missing nearby, police sent out an AMBER alert Thursday morning. That van discovered later less than 10 blocks away, this neighbor spotting it abandoned and became suspicious.

"I didn't pay it any mind," said Tim Reeves. "I said oh there's the plates."

Grayson and that little boy are still nowhere to be found. But then, on Biltmore, roughly four miles from there, a man walking to a gas station, says he saw Grayson with little Marvie.

"He was walking toward this house right here," said Cneri Powell. "That's when I saw him with the baby and called police."

That witness says he watched Grayson go into this abandoned home and leave without the boy. That's when he and neighbors called police again and brought the boy inside. An ambulance took Marvie to the hospital.

"I'm glad people are out here paying attention," said Ford. "Because this could have been anybody else's kid."

"They woke up and got out here, as well as the family," said Ortagus Jackson of Crime Stoppers. "They got up, looked in houses and that's what counts."

And not long after, tips poured in. Detroit police say the community led cops to Seven Mile and Ryan. That was where police caught Grayson inside a bus.

Grayson did not put up a fight. Now police and this family are thanking everyone who helped in finding this little boy, who is now all smiles and ready to go home.

"Once they let him go he is going to have family all around him all day long," Ford said. "He might as well get ready for it."

Grayson will be facing charges of kidnapping which carries a life sentence.