A 7-year-old nonverbal boy on the autism spectrum drowned in a Cape Coral canal after leaving his home with his mother's cellphone, police say. Artemis Robinson was found submerged in the water not far from where his phone's last known location had pinged, ending a frantic search that involved neighbors and kayaks.
According to The News-Press, Cape Coral police officers responded to reports of the missing boy near Northeast 19th Terrace and Northeast 13th Place. A separate account from Yahoo News, citing WBBH, states that police received a call about the missing child at 8:45 p.m. on Oct. 17; the two reports give different dates for when officers were alerted, and that discrepancy has not been resolved.
Robinson's mother told officers she last saw her son at home with her cellphone and had tracked its last-known whereabouts, according to the report. That tracking data pointed searchers to the area near Northeast 13th Place and Northeast 19th Terrace, where the phone was ultimately found.
A 911 Caller Shared the Phone's Location
The same caller said Robinson was wearing a diaper, and she sounded rattled while recalling the day he was born, per the report. She also told the dispatcher, “his location says by a canal, last updated now, but we can't see him,” underscoring how close searchers were to the boy even as his exact location remained elusive.
Accounts of how Robinson was ultimately located differ. The News-Press reports that several bystanders entered a nearby canal in kayaks and found him shortly after, with a kayaker discovering him fully submerged about 10 feet from the canal bank, according to police reports. The separate account from Yahoo News, citing WBBH, instead says a neighbor, identified as Kayden McIntosh, found the boy tangled underwater roughly 30 minutes after beginning to search. Yahoo News also reports that it remains unclear how the child entered the canal.
Boy Died Within an Hour of 911 Call
Robinson died less than an hour after authorities received the 911 call, according to the report. The rapid timeline reflects how quickly a child who wanders near open water can be lost, a pattern researchers have tied specifically to children with autism.
A 2023 report from WUSF found that six of 36 child drownings reported in Florida involved children with autism, and five of those six cases involved a child who had wandered off unnoticed. The same report noted that wandering was listed as the activity leading to 73.9% of drownings among autistic children between 2000 and 2017. WUSF also described a February case in which a 5-year-old boy with autism got out of his family's Seminole County home unnoticed, wandered to a pool, and was later found unresponsive and pronounced dead.
Florida's Child Drowning Numbers Climbing
Robinson's death adds to what has become a grim statewide pattern. Florida recorded 104 child drowning deaths in 2024, a record high at the time, according to WESH. WESH reported the number rose to 140 in 2025.
