Harry Kkonde missing 3 year old Massachusetts boy found dead in Lowell pond after vanishing from babysitter’s home, 650 ft away.
A parent’s worse nightmare. A 3-year-old Boston-area boy was found dead more than a day after he went missing from his babysitter’s home despite a massive search effort prosecutors said.
Harry Kkonde was found just after 1 p.m. Wednesday near a pond in the area of Rollie’s Farm in Lowell, Massachusetts, officials said. It remained unclear how the toddler reached the pond, which is located 650 feet from where the boy went missing, authorities said.
Over 200 first responders ‘meticulously’ searched five square miles in Lowell’s Pawtucketville neighborhood, where Harry, was last seen on Tuesday morning around 9:15 a.m, officials said until Wednesday’s macabre discovery.
‘We do not know where he was from the time he was missing until he got to pond,’ Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan told reporters. ‘This is every parent’s worst nightmare, a child who disappears.’
Adding, ‘This is clearly not the result that anyone over these many hours of search would have anticipated or wanted.’
At some point the neighbor noticed Harry was no longer in the front yard
The boy was found by state police divers in about five feet of water, Ryan said. Harry was found wearing the same clothes he was last seen in — gray pants and a long-sleeved maroon shirt, Ryan said.
There was no external trauma and he was fully clothed, she added.
Authorities had searched the pond on Tuesday but were unable to find him. Ryan said it was not clear if Harry was in the pond at the time it was searched.
Ryan said authorities ‘have no idea how Harry came to reach that pond’ at this time.
The pond had been searched soon after the boy was reported missing and ‘many, many places were searched and re-searched,’ Ryan said. Harry was seen by a neighbor outside on the yard at some point before he went missing, Ryan said.
‘And at some point then the neighbor noticed he wasn’t there and made inquiries as to where he had gone,’ she said.
‘We have a very narrow window of when he went missing,’ Carlisle Police Chief John Fisher, the incident commander for the Northeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council Regional Response Team, told reporters Wednesday morning.
No foul play suspected
Fisher said this was Harry’s fifth visit with the babysitter and that it appears he walked out the door on his own. The babysitter was also watching one other child at the time, Fisher said.
The boy’s parents mourned their loss with other Ugandan immigrants Wednesday night. ‘We had the hope that he was going to come home alive,’ family friend Maureen Kalemba said according to CBS News. ‘It was so devastating to know that Harry just ended in that pond.’
Dozens of people gathered near the farm Wednesday night, leaving balloons and flowers. A vigil is being planned for Thursday night.
Officials did not believe foul play was involved.
