Noah Woods father was at the center of the search that ended after police and fire teams recovered the body of a child from Decoy Pond in Brantham. Supt Tom Pearse said the family had been informed, and he asked for privacy as the search moved into formal identification and a coroner’s referral.
Noah was three years old. Suffolk constabulary said he was last seen at 3pm on Tuesday in Merriam Close, Brantham, near Manningtree, after he became separated from a relative.
Supt Tom Pearse on Decoy Pond
Pearse said, “Police and fire teams this afternoon sadly recovered the body of a child from Decoy Pond in Brantham.” He added, “Formal identification has yet to take place, but the family of Noah Woods have been informed of this development. The discovery of the body is currently being treated as not suspicious, but unexplained.”
He also said, “The coroner will be informed of this development.” Those steps leave the case in a narrow but important phase: the body has been recovered, but the legal identification process still has to link the discovery to Noah Woods.
Searches of Decoy Pond
Searches of Decoy Pond started earlier on Wednesday after the area was cordoned off by police tape. That followed a large operation in and around Brantham that had drawn more than 1,300 members of the public, along with support from the National Police Air Service and HM Coastguard.
HM Coastguard, Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service and Suffolk Lowland Search and Rescue also assisted on the ground. Supt Tom Pearse told volunteers at Brantham Leisure Centre, “You will have heard the news,” and thanked them for the help they gave to the search.
Brantham Leisure Centre
Officers from Suffolk constabulary said Noah was autistic, non-verbal and had partial hearing loss. That detail shaped the scale and pace of the search effort around Brantham, where officers, rescue teams and members of the public searched for a child who had gone missing from the Suffolk-Essex border area.
For Noah’s family, the next step is the formal identification process and the coroner’s involvement. Until that is complete, the recovery from Decoy Pond remains a recovery, not a named legal finding, and the family’s request for time, space and privacy now takes priority.
