Police recover child’s body in Noah Woods search

• Suffolk Police recovered a child’s body from Decoy Pond in Brantham on Wednesday afternoon during the search for missing three-year-old Noah Woods.¹
• The force has informed Noah’s family, but has not formally identified the child as Noah.¹
• Police are treating the death as “not suspicious but unexplained”; the coroner has been informed. No post-mortem findings or cause of death have been released.¹
• Noah was last confirmed on CCTV at 2.37pm on Tuesday 15 September at a playground in Merriam Close, before police said he became separated from a relative and ran towards a nearby housing estate.¹
• Around 1,300 members of the public joined the search, alongside police, specialist dog handlers, coastguard, fire service and rescue teams.¹

The recovery ends the public search, but not the central questions about what happened to Noah. Suffolk Police’s latest statement gives no cause of death and does not say when formal identification or a post-mortem will be completed.

It also underlines the limits of a mass volunteer response in a high-risk search. Police welcomed public help but had warned people not to search open water or railways, saying those areas required specialist teams. The body was recovered by police divers, not volunteers.¹

Footnotes

1. Suffolk Constabulary, “Update – Noah Woods”, updated 16 September 2026 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶