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, law enforcement officials said.
The boy disappeared 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 shirt was found in the water near
an area where he had last been seen, NBC station KARK reported.
On Wednesday, crews set up a net on the river and used cadaver dogs, said Fulton County Sheriff's dispatcher Arles Lenderman.
Officials believe that the boy accidentally fell into the river, which was swollen after recent storms.
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.
Caleb lived in Springdale, Ark., about 150 miles from the site, with his parents and three siblings. His parents were staying at the camp during the search.
Roughly 1,000 people had been involved in Caleb's search.
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 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, Reuters and The Associated Press.
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