“Baby Joe” had slipped out of the house before, his parents told reporters, but never in the middle of the night and never for this long.
Joe Clyde Daniels’s parents told investigators that they went to wake the 5-year-old for school around 5:20 a.m. Wednesday, but he was gone.
His parents said they usually located him within shouting distance of their house in Dickson, about 50 miles west of Nashville, Tennessee.
On Wednesday morning, the couple searched their property on Garner’s Creek Road for an hour, then called police. The call led to a search that consumed their community and drew in hundreds of volunteers, all looking for an autistic 5-year-old who never talked.