Hours after starting a mass search, village unites in grief as body of missing Noah, three, is found in pond
They came from far and wide. Some rolled out of their beds during the small hours to reach their destination by dawn, others came from nearby towns and villages; pushing buggies, clutching walking sticks, carrying packed lunches, flasks of coffee and a torrent of hope.
Young, old; men, women – it was a crowd united that descended on the Suffolk village of Brantham.
So often it is dissent that brings crowds together, but this was not one of those occasions. Rather, this was a crowd drawn together with one compelling, heart-wrenching intent: to find three-year-old Noah Woods, who had disappeared from a playground in the village on Tuesday afternoon.
If a community could work miracles, this would have been the one to do it. But last night, all hope slipped away in then most devastating of ways at a hastily convened announcement at Brantham Leisure Centre, where the volunteer searchers were still assembled.
They wept as Superintendent Tom Pearse addressed them after Noah’s body was found. ‘You will have heard the news,’ he said. ‘First and foremost, our thoughts are with Noah’s family and all those who knew him.’
He said the agencies involved in the search, and Noah’s family, had been ‘overwhelmed by the outpouring of public support – people putting on their boots and helping us with the search and that, ladies and gentlemen, is yourselves’.
The officer’s voice cracked with emotion at times as he addressed the crowd of volunteers. Noah’s family, he said, now needed ‘time, space and privacy’.
Hundreds of members of the public had joined the search to find three–year–old Noah Woods, who went missing after visiting a playground in Suffolk
He said: ‘As a parent myself, I completely understand why people would want to help, and such a response is one that typifies the strong sense of community and the heartwarming nature of Suffolk people that make the county such a special place.’
Noah’s body was found by police divers in the dark waters of Decoy Pond, beside a path that led from the playground 200 yards away.
He had been playing happily when, in the blink of an eye, the chubby-cheeked young boy, with his soft crop of red curls, apparently managed to escape the attention of the family member watching over him and slip down a narrow pathway and disappear.
In other words, just the kind of scenario every parent dreads; and one many have experienced. There is usually a moment of blind, heart-racing panic that is typically followed by the sheer relief of discovering that the little escapee is happily occupied a short distance away.
Except, in Noah’s case, that is not what happened. The boy, who had been having an assessment for autism, was non-verbal and partially deaf, did not reappear and every hour that passed marked another hour in which his agonised family’s desperation mounted.
It was that knowledge that propelled the remarkable community efforts that started on Tuesday evening, when the first police appeal was made.
The population of Brantham, on the edge of the River Stour, is normally around 2,300 people, but by lunchtime on Wednesday it had grown by nearly half again as at least 1,300 volunteers descended, offering to do whatever they could to help find the boy.
The shared sentiment echoed across the assembled throng, who queued in waves throughout the day to register for search party duty in a village hall that has never seen so many volunteers.
CCTV images of the last whereabouts of Noah were released by police
Floral tributes are left by the playground close to where Noah went missing
Around 150 people crammed into the hall at 9.30am for a briefing from the parish council clerk and police, and there were similar meetings throughout the day.
‘Everybody who is a parent has had a moment where they’ve turned their back and their child’s disappeared,’ said one smartly dressed man. ‘They know what that feels like.’
They watched the CCTV footage of Noah, when it was released online on Wednesday lunchtime, on their phones.
It was just the kind of innocent vignette seen at playgrounds around the country: a young boy spinning a roundabout and running with it as it turns.
By 2.37pm he had vanished. It is thought that he ran down an alleyway beside the playground towards a nearby new-build housing estate, with construction ongoing, and Decoy Pond, which is used by fishermen. The area is surrounded by woodland and fields overlooking the estuary and the railway line between Ipswich and Liverpool Street, London.
Just three hours later, police issued a first appeal to the public to help find Noah, including an image and a description of what he was wearing – shorts, black Vans trainers with a white stripe and a white T-shirt emblazoned with the children’s TV character, Bluey.From the start Suffolk police said they were treating their hunt as ‘a missing person investigation’.
‘There is nothing to indicate anything sinister or any element of criminality has taken place although we keep an open mind as to the circumstances,’ said Supt Pearse.
The response from the public was striking for its genuinely good-natured, focused drive, the willingness to adhere to police instructions about where search parties should and shouldn’t go.
Aerial images show specialist police teams preparing to search a local lake on Wednesday
Noah vanished after becoming separated from a relative in Merriam Close, Brantham, on Tuesday afternoon
Searches continued throughout Wednesday, with two helicopters (police and coastguard), drones and a boat.
The first indications of a more ominous turn of events came at 4pm when a Metropolitan Police specialist diving team arrived at Decoy Pond. The path leading from the playground towards the pond was cordoned off.
Later, a human cordon formed by members of Suffolk Lowland Search and Rescue gathered around the pond’s edge.
Standing around 30ft apart from each other, they prevented members of the public getting to within around 150ft of the water.
The cordon melted away at about 5.20pm, minutes before police made the tragic announcement that a body had been found.
It was what many had feared but nobody wanted to hear – least of all the volunteers who had come wearing high-visibility jackets, responding to the heartfelt words of Noah’s father Rhys Woods, 25, who had posted on social media asking volunteers to widen their search beyond the village where possible.
‘I cannot go another night knowing he’s out there alone, please don’t give up on him, guys. He is out there somewhere and I appreciate every single one of you,’ he said.
On Facebook, there are images of an even smaller Noah, a baby in the arms of his mum, a 23-year-old hairstylist. There’s one of him just a few weeks old, his face lit up by an early smile, wearing bunny ears as he lies on a soft fur blanket.
There’s another, which is simply a babygrow saying ‘Baby Woods. Est. 2023’, alongside a blackboard saying ‘Baby Woods, coming soon’ and an ultrasound image.
How treasured those images and memories will be. How dearly Noah’s family will miss him – and how his tragic death has moved so many people he never met.
Georgia Terry, 30, a carer who had rushed from Clacton, Essex, to join the hunt from work, told the Daily Mail: ‘It just makes your blood run cold. In the blink of an eye, as well. It’s dreadful.’
A man in his 30s, walking with a young girl at his side, wiped his eyes as he said: ‘It sounded bad from the start but we had to come because there’s always hope.
‘It looks like that’s gone now. I can’t imagine what Noah’s family are going through.’
It was all so very different from earlier in the day. There was Rebecca, 52, who had driven to Brantham from Stowmarket in Suffolk, and said with a catch in her throat: ‘First thing this morning we decided to come along. I couldn’t sit at home.’
The travel agent, who skipped work to join the throng, said: ‘I’ve got a granddaughter who’s autistic so it struck a chord.’
There was traffic manager Chris Heelis, 28, who had only two hours’ sleep after a night shift before driving from Ipswich with his girlfriend Polly Lambert. ‘It just felt like we should be participating,’ said Polly, 25.
Youth mentor Dawn Jeffers, 51, and her law student daughter Shanya, 28, drove 160 miles from the West Midlands. The pair left home at 2.30am, arriving in Brantham at around 6am.
‘We heard that a child was missing and it touched our hearts,’ said Dawn.
‘We couldn’t sleep for thinking about it, so we put petrol in the car and came out.
‘We came here because we want to show our support.’
They had planned to book a hotel room and stay the night. ‘We cannot give up,’ said Shanya. Behind the scenes, helping to steer the volunteer effort, was Brantham parish clerk Sarah Keys, a 48-year-old a mother of three and former civil servant.
She said: ‘I haven’t slept since yesterday [Tuesday] morning. I think it’s just pure adrenaline. We feel we’ve got to keep pushing through at the moment.
‘I came to the village hall at 5.30pm last night and that’s it. Thousands of people have turned up. A lot came last night, but a phenomenal number today.
‘I don’t have the numbers, but you can see the cars parked on the side of every road leading into the village.
‘People just want to do something to help. For every one of them it’s personal because everyone knows a child who is or was that age, and you just want a happy ending to a nightmare.
‘Local people have also been incredible, helping provide drinks, food and directing the traffic and parking. Many took time off work and local employers have been great, allowing people to do so and donating money, food and skills to help us get through this.
‘I’ve never met Noah. I know he has family in the village, but this goes beyond that. It’s just a human response to an awful situation.’
So much hope, so much goodwill. If only every community could be so united and if only this was a tale of all that is good about community that had ended differently.
