Haley Wilder was pushing her son Waylon on a hammock in their Hendersonville yard when she glanced at her daughters for a moment. When she looked back, the boy was gone.

Waylon Wilder, a nonverbal child with autism, wandered away and was found in a neighbor's swimming pool, NewsChannel 5 reported. Thousands of people received a missing child alert before responders located him and attempted to save his life. He did not survive.

Now his mother is channeling her grief into a campaign for autism awareness, school inclusion and first-responder training in Sumner County.

"Waylon simply did not understand danger. He didn't know danger. He didn't fear anything. He had no fears," Haley Wilder told NewsChannel 5. "And that's part of the awareness that I would like to create because this looks like a safe place."

Haley Wilder said the pool was secured, but Waylon did not grasp the risk it posed. The whole thing, she said, happened in seconds.

A boy who communicated without words

Waylon loved the water, jumping on the trampoline, playing with sensory toys and watching the Titans. Though nonverbal, his mother said he had his own way of connecting with people, communicating through his smile and his eyes.

She had been working on an Individualized Education Program (IEP) to get Waylon back into school when he died. Plans for his return were sitting on her desk.

"I was doing an IEP and it's like I blinked and I was filling out a death certificate," she said.

Haley Wilder said she had faced barriers finding a school that could meet Waylon's needs. She said schools lacked the level of support he required and that she was told she would receive a callback about another placement but never did. She ultimately chose to homeschool him. No response from Sumner County Schools regarding those claims appears in public reporting as of publication.

Calling for training and funding

Haley Wilder said she sees gaps in funding and training that need to change. She called for increased funding for schools and law enforcement so both can receive appropriate training for working with children who have autism. No response from local law enforcement agencies regarding the incident or the training request appears in public reporting as of publication.

The risks Haley Wilder described are well documented nationally. The National Autism Safety Council reports that nearly half of autistic children are prone to elopement, the term for when a child with autism leaves a supervised area without the caregiver's knowledge. An average of eight to ten people die each month in the United States following elopement, and approximately 82% of those deaths involve drowning, according to the council's data.

Haley Wilder said she wants awareness to reach people who do not yet understand autism. She has called specifically for more school funding and law enforcement training in Sumner County.