Candlelight vigil will take place as six-year-old Maddox Ritch disappears

A candlelight vigil will be held on Wednesday night as investigators pursue the desperate search for a 6-year-old missing in a park in North Carolina.

Maddox Ritch, an autistic man who does not speak, disappeared Saturday at Rankin Lake Park in Gastonia with his father and an unidentified adult, the police said.

"We searched everywhere," said a park employee in a 911 call made public Wednesday by the police. "The parents are looking here."

Gastonia Police Department

"We were walking on a track around the lake and he decided to take off from me … I did not think about it and he was a little too far from me," Ian Ritch told Good Morning America on Wednesday. . . "As soon as I got to the point where I could not see him anymore, I started to panic, I could not see him anywhere."

"I think I should catch up with him, do not let him go too far," Ian Ritch added.

WSOC

Since he's gone, his parents and authorities are desperately searching for him. Maddox has blond hair and blue eyes, weighs 45 pounds and is 4 feet tall, the police said. According to the police, he was wearing black shorts, closed-toed sandals and an orange t-shirt that read "I am the man" when he disappeared.

His mother, Carrie Ritch, joined the police at a press conference Tuesday.

"Maddox is my whole world and my reason for living," said Carrie Ritch at the press conference.

"If you were in the park on Saturday and you saw Maddox … please, call the phone line urgently," she says, crying. "I want my baby in my arms."

Investigators checked dozens of dumpsters, searched the park's lake with sonar and divers, and inspected the area with helicopters and drones, the police said.

Gastonia Police Department

The authorities have also recorded messages from Maddox's parents and broadcast the messages in the woods in the hope that their voices will persuade him to go out if he is there, the FBI said.

Anyone who was in Rankin Lake Park on Saturday is asked to call the hotline at 704-869-1075. A $ 10,000 reward is offered.

"We talked to a lot of people who were there, but we want to make sure we talk to them all," Gastonia police chief Robert Helton said in a statement released Monday by the police. "No information is too small, anything you think may be insignificant could be helpful for our case."