The following is what someone commenting to the news said, and though you can't automatically believe any poster, what he says seems to fit in with the information given so far. (And if what he says is true it shows why the boy may have been unhappy - he likely missed living with his grandparents who he'd lived with for years, and he had uncles and cousins who he spent a lot of time with, apparently. It also shows there was a home/homes available for them to send him to if they were truly at their wits end - back his grandparents or at one of his uncles' homes. Perhaps they tied him up because he kept wanting/attempted to run back to Florida.)
By "rruss":
...Brice's first wife died to cancer 4 yrs ago and he was so distraught that his parents raised these two until last yr…Tyler was a student of mine in our local homeschool co-op and was definitely a grade or two ahead of his age. After talking to his uncles the other night, I found out Tyler was an avid reader and read many books ahead of his "grade" level. They were registered with the state or they would not have been allowed to participate in our local homeschool support group.
Oh how terribly sad. What in the world went wrong.