Noah Woods, Missing Three-Year-Old Non-Verbal Boy, Found Dead In A Pond
The search for Noah Woods ended in heartbreak Wednesday evening. The three-year-old boy who vanished from a playground in Brantham, Suffolk, on Tuesday afternoon, partially deaf, non-verbal and undergoing an autism assessment, was found dead in Decoy Fishing Pond, not far from where he was last seen.
Authorities are treating the death as unexplained but not suspicious, pending formal identification and a coroner's investigation.
Noah was last seen on CCTV at 2:37 PM Tuesday running and playing on the merry-go-round at Merriam Close playground before becoming separated from a relative.
Police released that footage Wednesday morning, the boy in a white Bluey T-shirt, shorts and black Vans trainers, curly ginger hair, running freely. They believed he had gone down an alleyway beside the playground toward a new-build housing estate near the pond.
Because Noah is non-verbal, he would not respond to his name being called — making the search extraordinarily difficult. Suffolk Police asked anyone who spotted him not to approach or grab him but to immediately call 999.
More than 1,300 volunteers from across Suffolk and beyond joined the search, which involved specialist search teams, dog units, helicopters from the National Police Air Service and HM Coastguard. It was one of the largest civilian mobilizations for a missing child in recent UK memory.
He was three years old.
