A seven-year-old autistic non-verbal Florida boy’s body was found in a lake a day after he ran off from his home – resulting in officials making a sinister discovery. 

Charles ‘Charlie’ Newton had just arrived home in the 1400 block of Stillwater Avenue with his parents from buying pizza on November 25 when he suddenly took off from the car. 

His mom made a frantic 911 call and police arrived at the property minutes later.

But once inside, they were horrified to find the family had been living in squalor in a cockroach-infested home.

Emergency services swarmed on the property just after 8.12pm after his mom reported that he managed to slip out of her grasp as she was coming home.

‘My son, he just took off, he is autistic, he is non-verbal. I was coming home with the pizzas, I just grabbed on to him and he just took off running,’ the distraught mother told News Journal Online a 911 dispatcher.

At 8.09pm, surveillance cameras captured images of the child running across Firefighters Memorial Park on Lombardy Drive, passing a a fire station next to the park and then running near a hill on Waterfall Circle towards a lake. 

An all-night manhunt was launched with two helicopters, three police dogs, drones from three police agencies, and 140 law enforcement officers in tow. 

However, the search came to an end after a neighbor called 911 to report possibly seeing a body in Lake Lapanocia in the 730 block of Waterfall Circle at around 10am, Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood confirmed. 

‘A little while ago this morning, a neighbor called and said he thinks what he sees is a body inside of the lake. 

‘Our deputies commandeered a kayak and went out there and our victim was found,’ Sheriff Chitwood said in a press conference.

Officials had previously shared on Facebook that Charlie was ‘attracted to Christmas lights as well as bodies of water and was known to climb up trees’. 

During a subsequent search of the boy’s house as a part of the investigation, officers noted that the property was ‘in a state of disarray’. 

Deputies found cockroaches, minimal food and no clean clothes inside the home, according to the incident report. 

All three of the couple’s children were reportedly sleeping on ‘dirty’ mattresses in one bedroom. 

Furthermore, police noticed the fridge was chained shut and the bathroom was guarded by a biometric lock. 

‘It was revealed the home to have a large roach infestation, minimal food for all 3 children in the home, no apparent clean clothes, all of the children shared a small bedroom with dirty mattresses on the floor, the refrigerator was chained closed and the only bathroom in the residents was locked via a biometric lock only accessible to (the parents),’ the report Fox 35 Orlando. 

Officials then notified Florida’s Department of Child and Families – who after careful evaluation deemed the home as unsafe for the other two children, believed to also be on the autism spectrum. 

When asked why the accident happened, the Sheriff said during the conference: ‘Here we are, again, a week later, and a little boy has drowned. An autistic child has drowned. And I don’t have the answers or any of us have the answers on how we prevent this from happening to another family.’ 

He also revealed that his agency is working with Halifax Health Medical Center, Easter Seals and the DCF to identify families with autistic children and offer them help.

‘(We have to) figure out a way to get them technology and try to introduce these kids to water because it’s a well-known fact that autistic kids love water and they are going to head to water,’ Chitwood said.

No charges have yet been pressed in connection to Charlie’s disappearance, death, or connected to the alleged conditions of the home. 

It remains unclear if the other two children of the couple are still living in the ‘unsafe’ house.