Police Find Missing Boy In Woods

Police said they received a report about 3:43 pm on Sunday, July 24, that an unidentified 9-year-old autistic boy had wandered away and was missing from his home on Winton Farm Road, off Pine Tree Hill Road, near the Monroe town line.

Several police officers, plus the police department’s German shepherd and its handler, responded to the scene to search for the missing youth, police said. Police searched the house and land near it in looking for the boy.

Police Officer John McCluskey located the boy sitting on a rock about 100 yards into a wooded area behind the house about 30 minutes after police had arrived at the scene, police said. The boy was uninjured and was reunited with his family, police said.

Four weeks earlier, on the afternoon of Sunday June 26, police had responded to the same address on a report that an autistic boy was missing from the property.

The youth who went missing on June 26 is a twin brother of the youth who went missing on July 24, police said.

On June 26, Officer McCluskey spotted the missing boy in chest-deep water and attempting to get out of a pond off Huntingtown Road, after which police removed the boy from the pond uninjured and reunited him with his family.

Police said the family is considering security measures to be taken to prevent the boys from wandering away from home.