Who Is David Puckett? Body Of Lost Colorado Boy Discovered In Iced Over Pond

The body of a 6-year-old boy who had been reported missing since wandering off on New Year’s Eve in suburban Colorado was discovered Tuesday in a pond that had frozen over. The temperatures outside that night were recorded to have been in the teens, while the boy was last spotted solely wearing a light jacket.

Authorities in Aurora, Colorado, sent a dive crew to scour the pond located in a public park close to the boy's home where he had last been seen on Saturday night. Divers found David Puckett’s body around 10 a.m. local time and subsequently ordered the park to shut down. Local detectives reportedly zeroed in on searching the pond Tuesday morning after a police dog picked up the boy’s scent Monday night in the area surrounding the pond.

Local police were treating the area of the park as a crime scene into the boy’s death, but Aurora Police Chief Nick Metz said the death was an accident and his department did not suspect foul play.

The search team had suspicions that Pucket tragically wound up in the pond, but Metz said there were not signs of broken ice that would have led them to examine it initially, according to local reports Tuesday. Aurora is a suburb of Denver, Colorado, located 11 miles east of the city center.

“I have the very unfortunate news of letting you know that in a pond … that we found the body of what appears to be a child inside the pond underneath the ice,” Metz said at a news conference. “At this time, we cannot give a positive indication on the child. However, because of this information and our suspicion, I had the unfortunate experience of having to inform David’s family of what we had found.”

The boy’s mother delivered a heartbreaking plea to the search teams to find the boy with haste Sunday because she was afraid of the cold weather.

Metz said David had a history of wandering off from his home. While Metz told local reporters there has not been a coroner’s report positively identifying the body, he added that detectives had begun a full investigation into the case, local reports said

The Federal Bureau of Infestation was called in to assist the over 150 local police members and 200 volunteers who combed the area after an Amber Alert and a $10,000 reward for the boy was issued Saturday. A team of 50 FBI agents contacted known sex offenders in the area and helped officers go door to door within two miles of the Puckett house with fliers and pictures of the missing child.