NAYLOR — The search for a missing Naylor toddler ended tragically Monday night when she was found in a pond on the family’s property.
Reese Ainley, 3, was pronounced dead at 7:20 p.m. by a doctor at Poplar Bluff Regional Medical Center, according to Missouri State Highway Patrol Cpl. J.T. Wilson.
The child had gone missing at about 4 p.m.
“The mom gets home with a couple of kids,” Wilson said. “One went in. She figured the other child did too.”
The woman, Wilson said, later saw their dogs in the yard and thought the child “must be around; the dogs would have followed her.”
Wilson said the mother subsequently searched different places and got “more and more panicked” when she couldn’t find her daughter and called authorities.
According to Wilson, there were a
“ton of people, 50 to 100 people — family, first responders, fire and rescue” personnel who assisted in the search.
The child, Wilson said, was found floating in a pond near the home by a volunteer firefighter at about 6:15 p.m.
“She was about 10 feet off the bank,” said Wilson, who estimated the water depth at about four to five feet.
“They got her, took her by ambulance and hoped for a miracle,” Wilson said.
The child’s death, Wilson said, is one of the worst ones he has been called to investigate.
Wilson said he has not done a lot of investigation yet due to how distraught the child’s parents were Monday night.
“As a parent, I don’t know how to deal with that,” Wilson said.