5-year-old boy with autism found dead in pond after wandering from Hillsborough County home

By 10 Tampa Bay News

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A 5-year-old boy with nonverbal autism was found dead in a body of water Friday after wandering away from his Hillsborough County home. "This is a family's worst day," Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister said. The sheriff said deputies received a 911 call from a "frantic father" who realized his son was missing from their apartment in the area of Cypress Mulch Circle and Northgreen Avenue. According to Chronister, the father last saw his son when they both woke up around 5 a.m. in the bed they shared. They fell back asleep, and when the father woke up again around 9 a.m., his son was missing and the screen in the area outside the home had been pushed out. The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office responded with dive teams, aviation units, drones and K-9s. It was a dive team member who found the boy's body in the retention pond about 25-30 feet from the screened-in area that was broken. "The dive team member entered the water, entered into about 5 feet or about wa

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