A 4-year-old boy who wandered away from his Southampton home with two dogs was found safe and uninjured Thursday afternoon after a multi-agency search. The child was located at approximately 1 p.m., roughly two hours after he was reported missing around 11:10 a.m., and was returned safely to his family.
The recovery was credited to the Massachusetts State Police Special Emergency Response Team, known as SERT, which assisted the Southampton Police Department after troopers from the Northampton Barracks responded to the call, according to Massachusetts State Police. Trooper Timothy Fanion is credited with locating the child, and the agency's Air Wing provided aerial video of the rescue. The response also drew the State Police K-9 Unit, the Drone Unit, and DCR Rangers, all of whom joined ground search teams.
Southampton's wooded landscape presented a genuine challenge for searchers. The troopers who responded came from State Police Station B-6 in Northampton, per Mass.gov.
Trooper Brought Prior Search Experience to the Scene
Before joining the state police in February 2019, Fanion served as a municipal officer with the Westfield Police Department, according to The Westfield News. He also brought direct field experience to Thursday's search: in February 2024, Fanion took part in a successful winter search that located an 87-year-old man with dementia missing in freezing woodland terrain in nearby Russell, an operation that likewise involved state police K-9 and aviation units, as reported by Boston 25 News.
No Amber Alert was issued in connection with the search. Brookline Police Department policy lists danger of serious bodily harm or death and information that could make an alert useful among its criteria for issuing one, per the Brookline Police Department.
Why Speed Matters in Cases Like This
Thermal-imaging drones played a supporting role in the search. The State Police's Uncrewed Aircraft Systems unit works alongside the Air Wing and SERT to perform thermal imaging and ground grid searches in dense foliage, a capability Hoodline detailed in its coverage of a similar search for a missing 13-year-old near Mansfield last month.
National figures provide broader context for missing-child cases. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children assisted law enforcement with 32,167 missing child cases nationwide in 2025 and maintains a 90 percent recovery rate, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Separately, the FBI's National Crime Information Center recorded 349,557 missing youth reports under age 18 across the country in 2024.
Thursday's search ended with the child safe. Within roughly two hours of the initial report, ground teams, aerial assets, and a trooper with firsthand search experience located the child and brought him home unharmed.
