Missing 3-year-old boy Harry Kkonde found dead in Lowell pond day after disappearance

LOWELL – Harry Kkonde, a missing 3-year-old Lowell boy, was found dead in shallow water a day after he was reported missing from his babysitter’s home and a massive search was launched.

Harry’s body was discovered Wednesday afternoon, more than a day after he went missing from the house on Freda Lane in the Pawtucketville section of the city Tuesday. 

He was found by a State Police dive team in a pond not far from the home in Lowell. The pond had been searched Tuesday and Harry was not located. A day later, police were re-checking areas because the boy was believed to be on the move.

Harry was wearing the clothes he was last seen in, and found in about five feet of water.

“This is obviously every parent’s worst nightmare,” Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan said on Wednesday. 

Investigators said Harry was dropped off at the home Tuesday morning. A neighbor saw him playing in the yard around 9:15 a.m. About 15 minutes later, the babysitter called 911 to report Harry was missing.

“We have a very narrow window of when he went missing,” Carlisle Police Chief John Fisher, the incident commander for the Northeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council Regional Response Team, told reporters Wednesday morning. 

Fisher said this was Harry’s fifth visit with the babysitter and that it appears he walked out the door on his own. The babysitter was also watching one other child at the time, Fisher said.

Two different police dogs picked up Harry’s scent, both heading in the same direction towards the woods behind the house. Harry was last seen wearing a long-sleeve maroon shirt and gray pants with a white stripe on them.

Police do not suspect foul play and were treating it as a search for a lost child. Fisher said they started the search at the home and expanded it out in all directions Wednesday into a nearby state forest and Tyngsboro. About 200 people were involved and Fisher added that the FBI’s Child Abduction Rapid Deployment team offered to help as well.

About 180 officers from several police departments searched the entire area all day Tuesday. People who live in the neighborhood were asked to check their surveillance video, doorbell cameras, property and cars.

“We don’t have him on video,” Fisher said Wednesday, noting that the boy’s size might not have set off a doorbell camera. “We have the footage, we don’t have him on it.”

Ryan said her department will now shift its focus from finding Harry to finding out what happened.