5 Year Old Jayliel Vega Batista Missing Since 12/31/15 (Wandered Away from New Year’s Eve Party) in Allentown, PA

5 year old Jayliel Vega Batista has been missing since December 31, 21015, when he wandered away from a New Year’s Eve party in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The search continues for the missing boy who has autism that is reported to have left his home without shoes or a coat at approximately 10:30 p.m. Thursday.

Police on Saturday recanvassed an eastern Pennsylvania neighborhood where a 5-year-old boy with autism wandered away from a New Year’s Eve party without shoes or a coat.

Allentown police Capt. Glen Dorney said 20 search-and-rescue dog teams were looking for Jayliel Vega Batista.

The boy was downstairs playing with a toy with some other children when he left the home at about 10:30 p.m. Thursday, said his 16-year-old sister, Tayritza Molina. The boy was visiting his great-aunt’s home for the holiday, and left barefoot and without any kind of outerwear, police said.

Police were going door to door in the boy’s neighborhood again on Saturday because efforts to track him into some nearby woods were unsuccessful. But they said a glut of volunteer searchers was complicating efforts to find the boy.

“We’re proud of them for stepping up in the force that they’ve done,” Dorney said, but there were so many volunteers in the woods and elsewhere, it was compromising the ability of the dogs and others to locate the boy.

Instead, police asked people who live in the area to thoroughly search their own property and parked cars periodically, in case the boy comes wandering in search of shelter. Police checked out a home at about 2:30 a.m. Saturday after someone thought they saw the boy’s face in an upstairs window but said the boy wasn’t there.

UPDATE I: Search for autistic boy continues as night turns frigid.

A bloodhound that Allentown police were using to find Jayliel Vega Batista tracked a scent Friday from the Keck Park neighborhood, across the Hamilton Street Bridge to Front and Chew streets, police Chief Keith Morris said.

Police couldn’t say for sure if the scent was that of Jayliel, who was last seen running on the 200 block of East Union Street about 11 p.m. Thursday. Several bloodhounds were pulled into the search Friday afternoon, Morris said.

A Philadelphia Police Department helicopter hovered over the East Side as darkness fell Friday and worry turned to fear.

UPDATE II: Coroner at scene where missing Allentown boy’s tablet may have been found.

The Lehigh County coroner has arrived at Canal Park in east Allentown, where an electronic tablet that 5-year-old Jayliel Vega Batista was carrying when he went missing Thursday night may have been found, according to eyewitnesses at the scene.

A red and white tablet was fished from the water at Canal Park shortly before 1 p.m. by Thurman Clark, 25, of Northampton.

Clark, who just joined the search, said he spotted something red or orange in the water and waded in to check it out.

“I really hope it’s not his, ” he said.

Police have not confirmed the finding or commented on it. But they did send divers to the canal after the tablet was found.