{"id":366444,"date":"2026-08-08T20:55:21","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T20:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/366444\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T20:55:21","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T20:55:21","slug":"missing-5-year-old-tampa-boy-found-dead-in-nearby-pond-hillsborough-sheriff-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/366444\/","title":{"rendered":"Missing 5-Year-Old Tampa Boy Found Dead In Nearby Pond: Hillsborough Sheriff"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>TAMPA, FL \u2014 A 5-year-old autistic boy reported missing Friday morning in Tampa was found dead in a nearby pond after an extensive search, according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff&#8217;s Office.<\/p>\n<p>Deputies said the child was last seen around 5 a.m. inside his family&#8217;s home in the area of Cypress Mulch Circle and Northgreen Avenue.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-subscribe\">\n  <a class=\"article-subscribe-link\" href=\"https:\/\/patch.com\/florida\/southtampa\/subscribe?utm_source=amp&amp;utm_campaign=subscribe&amp;utm_medium=mobile&amp;utm_term=subscribe_in_article\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Subscribe<\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p>One of the child&#8217;s parents woke up around 9 a.m. and discovered a hole in the back screen of the home, the sheriff&#8217;s office said. <\/p>\n<p>After searching the residence and surrounding neighborhood without finding the boy, the parent called 911 around 9:30 a.m. to report him missing.<\/p>\n<p>The search quickly expanded to include more than 140 personnel, along with the sheriff&#8217;s office Aviation Unit, Drone Team, K-9 Unit and Dive Team. Authorities found the child dead in a nearby pond shortly after 11 a.m., officials said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There are no words that can ease the pain of losing a child,&#8221; Sheriff Chad Chronister said in a statement. &#8220;Today, our entire sheriff&#8217;s office family grieves alongside this family. Every deputy and detective who responded did so with the goal to bring this little boy home safely. I am incredibly proud of how quickly our agency responded, but my heart breaks that the outcome wasn&#8217;t what we all prayed for.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>See Also: <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, FL \u2014 A 5-year-old autistic boy reported missing Friday morning in Tampa was found dead in a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":365601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-366444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/365601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}