I got an event saying
we received a message from someone else on the island and it said the Golden Child was lost
...anyone else get this event...?
I got this as well. Since the villager came downstream (presumeably), the villager is probably from the western village or maybe the northern village. Meaning that the news has gotten around pretty fast.
It also implies that there is a system in place where the villages are in regular (not neccesarily daily) contact with each other.