The remains of a 5-year-old New Hampshire boy who had been missing for about a month were found Saturday in a wooded area in Massachusetts, a report said.
The body of little Elijah Lewis was located in Abington after searchers descended upon the area a day earlier, authorities told WCVB.
Sources told the news outlet that the grim discovery was made after investigators found a cellphone connected to the case in a pond in the Massachusetts town of Ayer.
The boy’s cause of death has not yet been determined.
Last week, Elijah’s 35-year-old mother, Danielle Denise Dauphinais, and her boyfriend, Joseph Stapf, 30, were arrested in connection to the boy’s disappearance by New York City transit police.
The two were slapped with charges of witness tampering and child endangerment for allegedly telling others to lie about where her son was living as child protection services tried to find him, according to the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office.
Elijah was only reported missing to New Hampshire child services and local cops on Oct. 14.
Initially, authorities believed he hadn’t been seen in six months. But that timeline has since been reduced to about a month, according to WCVB.
The state AG’s office said it is awaiting the autopsy and toxicology test results before considering additional charges.
“Obviously, a little boy is gone, and no one deserves to die this way,” Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz said, according to the report.
“We will do everything in our power to make sure we get justice for this little boy,” said Cruz.