“Tonight, we grieve with them,” Police Chief Brian Rebholz said Thursday night.
Barb Wilson, West Chester Twp. spokeswoman said the boy was found dead about 9 p.m. by divers in a pond at the apartment complex.
Wilson said “it has been pretty moving to see the community come together for the search and just the number of special units we had in here, the number of assets and resources and the expertise working here was amazing. We want to express gratitude for that.”
West Chester Twp. police said Joshua, who is autistic, was last seen around 5:30 p.m. Wednesday near his home in the Lakefront at West Chester apartment complex.
His mother was beside herself when she called 911 Wednesday telling the dispatcher, “They can’t find my little boy,” as she drove from her job in the Tri-County area.
An older brother also called 911 to report the boy missing.
On Thursday, hundreds of people searched around the apartment complex for the missing boy. The apartment complex is surrounded by a number of ponds, including one right behind their building. Crews from local, regional and state agencies descended onto the area looking for the boy. Two officers from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources were in a boat searching one of the nearby ponds Thursday morning, and Ohio BCI had a watercraft drone searching another pond.
“I can’t say enough about the support, not only the support we received here but it was also the support that we got out in the township from other agencies coming in and helping us out,” Rebholz said. “Obviously the circumstances didn’t turn out the way we wanted them to. We were on a mission to locate Joshua and bring him home, an unfortunately this is where we’re at.”
Police said the boy was dropped off earlier in the day by his bus driver and had been with his adult sister.
During a late morning press conference Thursday, fire officials said the goal was to re-canvas areas near where Joshua went missing and further north; groups were formed to search areas in Liberty Twp. and Fairfield as well. West Chester officials said there are eight retention ponds on the property at Wyndtree Drive; two of those were searched Wednesday night in the dark while five more were searched Thursday morning.
Multiple different agencies — including Ohio State Highway Patrol, Texas Equusearch, Buckeye SAR and multiple Cincinnati-area agencies — have responded to help with the search, along with nearly 300 volunteers from the local community, West Chester Police Chief Brian Rebholz said Thursday morning.
Crews originally began searching the apartment complex where the boy lived but later widened their search with officials saying the boy may have also traveled into Liberty Twp. or Fairfield Twp.
“We’re relying on our citizens and partners to be able to take the picture that we provided and be able to call into our dispatch center if they have information they think is relative to that,” said Randall Hanifen, assistant fire chief.
