By msnbc.com staff and news services
Arkansas State Police via AP
Emergency crews Wednesday found the body of 4-year-old Caleb Linn in the South Fork of the Spring River in northern Arkansas' Ozark foothills, his family has told The Associated Press.
Caleb's uncle, Chris Bruner, revealed the discovery a day after the boy's clothing was found in the river.
The boy had been missing since Saturday morning in the Camp Kia Kima Boy Scout Camp area in Hardy.
Tuesday, the focus turned to the Spring River when the child's shirts were found in the water near
an area where he had last been seen, NBC station KARK reported.
Jeannie Nuss / AP file
Searchers walk toward the river at Kia Kima Boy Scout camp near Hardy, Ark., before 4-year-old Caleb Linn's body was found.
Roughly 300 people had been involved in the search since Caleb's disappearance just before noon on Saturday.
On Tuesday, Linn's great grandmother, Carolyn Truex, said she and her family had been holding tightly to the hope the missing boy took a wrong path. Or that he fell into the fast-moving stream but managed to pull himself out and survive alone.
Authorities narrowed their focus to the water late Tuesday and called off the ground search for Caleb, who had been missing since Saturday. He had tagged along with his aunt and several other children to help clear storm debris from a bridge at the 900-acre Camp Kia Kima Boy, which his aunt was looking after while the regular caretaker was away.
When five of the children left to go back to the cabin area around lunchtime, Caleb asked if he could follow. His aunt told him he could, but that he had to stick to the road, Fulton County Sheriff Buck Foley said. The last she saw of him before she turned around to resume her work, he said, was Caleb standing at the end of the bridge.
This article includes reporting by NBC station KARK and The Associated Press.
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