Nine-year-old dead after disappearing from Brooklyn IKEA

A nine-year-old boy who went missing from an IKEA in Brooklyn surfaced on the edge of a nearby channel early Thursday before he was pronounced dead, police said.

Officials said they found the child floating in the store’s surrounding waters in critical condition after midnight Thursday. He was pronounced dead about an hour later at NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital.

The child, whose identity has not been publicly released, was autistic, according to authorities.

The nine-year-old’s mother alerted authorities at 9 p.m. Wednesday that he had wandered off in the furniture superstore and could not be found. Officials reviewed security footage that showed the child exiting the back of the store, which opens out to the Erie Basin.

The child’s death comes months after the bodies of two boys were found in different Manhattan rivers in May. In another separate incident, authorities recovered the body of a teenage swimmer in Coney Island days after he went missing in July.