The father of an autistic 6-year-old boy last seen in a North Carolina park said Wednesday he’s racked with guilt for letting his son out of his sight — as a massive search for the child stretches into its fifth day.

“I feel like I should’ve caught him, not let him get too far,” dad Ian Ritch said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“It’s hard to sleep,” he added. “I feel guilty because I can go to a house and lay down on the bed,” and “he’s out there in the woods sleeping on the ground and that’s very upsetting.”

The father and son often go for walks in North Carolina’s Rankin Lake Park and Maddox, who has autism and is nonverbal, will often run ahead and then stop, to wait for his dad to catch up.

But on Saturday, the child didn’t slow down and disappeared from view.

“As soon as I got to the point where I couldn’t see him anymore, I started panicking. I couldn’t see him anywhere,” Ritch said.

Hundreds of officials with the FBI, Gastonia Police Department and Gastonia Fire Department, among other agencies, have been scouring the park around the clock since the young boy’s disappearance.

They’re even playing recordings of the boy’s parents voice into the sprawling woods, hoping to draw out the youngster.

“If he’s lost in the woods, he’ll be able to hear those messages played, and we’re hoping that he’ll come to the words of his mother and his father,” FBI supervisory special agent Jason Kaplan said at a news conference Monday, according to CNN.

As the search continues, the boy’s parents are growing more and more concerned that he hasn’t been found.

“After the first day, I thought they would have found him,” Ritch said.

In an emotional press conference on Tuesday, Maddox’s mom Carrie Ritch said he is her “whole world and [her] reason for living.”

“I would appreciate it if you were at the park Saturday and saw Maddox, to please, urgently, please, call the tip line, please,” she said. “Continue praying for him because I just want my baby home, please. Whatever you can do.”

Authorities have also widened their search to two miles beyond the park’s boundaries and are using drones in the investigation. While the FBI is offering a $10,000 reward for information that leads to Maddox’s discovery.

The little boy has blond hair, blue eyes, weighs 45-pounds and is 4-feet-tall. He was wearing black shorts and an orange t-shirt that reads “I am the Man” at the time he vanished.

“I’m going to do all I can do to make sure he gets back home,” Maddox’s dad said. “I’ll be out there searching, waiting, hoping, praying, everything I can do to get him home.”