PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. (CBS12) — A missing non-verbal 5-year-old boy’s body was tragically found in a lake in Port St. Lucie late Monday night.
Officials with the Port St. Lucie Police Department (PSLPD) say officers responded to a home on Northwest Wisk Fern Circle regarding the disappearance of Neymir Luka Valere, who is on the autism spectrum.
Ring doorbell video from a neighbor’s home shows the five-year-old boy running along the sidewalk around 4:40 P.M. However, Neymir’s mother didn’t report him missing to the police until just after 8 P.M.
“The mother thought the child was with an older sibling in a room upstairs in the house, and later on, she ends up discovering that the [teen] had left,” said Police Chief Leo Nymczyk.
In response, a large team of officers, including road patrol, K9 units, SWAT technicians with drones, the Marine Unit, Dive Team, detectives, and the Air Unit from the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office, searched the surrounding neighborhood for any signs of the young boy.
With any missing person with autism, officials start at bodies of water.
“We identified a footprint along the side of it, which had us very concerned that he was in that body of water. So, we had drones doing grid searches on each part of water in the area, and the drone eventually got to the other end of the lake and there was a child,” said Nymcziek.
PSLPD has a long-standing partnership with ‘Project Lifesaver,’ a non-profit aimed at helping locate missing autistic patients.
“Which is a radio frequency bracelet that you know, children with autism or dementia patients where it allows us to track them,” said Nymcziek.
Chief Nymcziek says Neymir was not a part of this program. But even if he did have the tracking bracelet, in this case, it wouldn’t have helped.
That’s because time was of the essence, and his mom didn’t know the boy wasn’t in the home.
“Sometimes it’s just too late by a time 911 is actually called,” said Nymcziek. “I believe that he was in the water for several hours by the time that we recovered him.”
Neymir’s body was recovered in the lake just before 11:30 p.m.
Chief Nymcziek says even though this is a tragic accident, it’s a good reminder to parents of children with autism to know what resources are available to them to prevent incidents like this from happening again.
“When you’ve got people who are responsible with this child who need constant, constant care and surveillance every day, every minute of every day, year in and year out, for years on end, this is the potential for one human error, one simple misjudgment, one accidental time falling asleep. That’s all it takes. So, I think I’d be very careful about passing judgment on a parent who’s tasked with something so difficult and challenging,” said Nymcziek.
On top of continuing their partnership with Project Lifesaver, PSLPD is looking into a GPS solution. Chief Nymcziek says this would allow caregivers to create geo fences around their homes and be alerted when a patient steps outside of the area.
“We are, and we’re continually at every turn, scanning technology and seeing how we can improve at all aspects of our performance,” said Nymcziek.
He expects that new technology to roll out by December or early next year.
On Tuesday, CBS12 News dove deeper into more tracking devices and statewide alerts offering hope for autism community.
This is the second child with autism that has died in a lake in the area in four months.