A nonverbal 6-year-old boy with special needs went missing at Brandywine Creek State Park, prompting patrol officers and a K9 team from the New Castle County Division of Police to rush to the Wilmington-area park to help search. The child was ultimately found barefoot, muddy and wet in a heavily wooded, brush-covered area near a pond — cold and shaken, but in good health, and was reunited safely with his family.
According to the New Castle County Police, officers and a K9 officer responded to Brandywine Creek State Park on August 27 to assist in the search. The department's account credits K9 FiasKo, a Belgian Malinois partnered with Master Corporal DiGati, with picking up a known scent from the missing child and tracking along a trail into a secluded wooded area. A member of the search team ultimately located the boy in that brush-covered stretch near the pond, after the team reported hearing a noise in the area.
A Dog With a Track Record in Dense Cover
K9 FiasKo is no stranger to searches through thick brush. The Malinois was imported from Slovakia and joined the New Castle County Division of Police alongside Master Corporal DiGati after finishing specialized training in June 2021, according to background shared on Facebook by New Castle County Police. Just last year, in July 2025, the same K9-handler team tracked a 14-year-old vehicle break-in suspect who fled across Delaware Route 7 and hid under a bush outside a Bear apartment complex, as reported by the New Castle County Police Department News. Back in April 2023, FiasKo also helped New Castle County patrol officers and Delaware State Police aviation units track two teenage suspects into a tree line in Claymont after they crashed a stolen vehicle during a police pursuit, per the First State Update.
Why Search Teams Zeroed In on the Water
The decision to push the search toward the pond and dense brush lines up with guidance for finding missing autistic children that emphasizes searching nearby bodies of water first. That urgency is grounded in grim statistics: the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children reported in May 2026 that 84% of accidental deaths among missing children on the autism spectrum result from drowning, since wandering children are frequently drawn toward nearby water.
Delaware has also built specific legal tools for cases like this one. Under Senate Bill 108, passed in August 2023, the state expanded its Gold Alert Program to let law enforcement issue public alerts for missing children with disabilities or special needs whose disappearances pose a credible threat to their safety, even when the case does not meet Amber Alert criteria, according to legislative records tracked by BillTrack50. Previously, Gold Alerts in Delaware were reserved mainly for missing seniors and suicidal individuals. It remains unclear whether a Gold Alert was formally issued during the search for this particular child.
Rugged Terrain, Specialized Training
Brandywine Creek State Park, located roughly three miles north of Wilmington, is not a small stretch of woods. The park spans more than 930 acres of dense hardwood forest, rolling hills, 19th-century stone farm walls and 14 miles of trails, according to the Delaware Division of Parks and Recreation. The park's broader history and natural areas add to its background, per background compiled on Wikipedia.
Finding a small child in terrain like that requires serious training on both ends of the leash. Delaware law enforcement canine teams train for duties including tracking, area searches and suspect apprehension. New Castle County's canine unit includes trained teams working in the county.
For now, the outcome in this case was the one every family hopes for: a scared, muddy child found near the water rather than in it, and returned home safely. Open questions remain about exactly how quickly the multi-agency response mobilized after the boy was first reported missing, and what wandering-prevention tools, such as Project Lifesaver transmitters, might be available to families with nonverbal children in the area.
