A child's body has been recovered in a wooded areas where police launched a search for five-year-old Shaniya Davis. Police spokesman Theresa Chance tells Digital Journal positive identification is pending. But police are certain it is her.
FAYETTEVILLE, NC – (Update) Authorities found the body believed to be that of missing five-year-old girl Shaniya Davis just hours after they launched a search in a wooded area based on "reliable" information that she was dead.
Fayetteville Police spokeswoman Theresa Chance confirmed: "We have a body, we are waiting for forensic confirmation."
"The body was found in the same area where were looking for Shaniya," she said in an interview by phone from the command post where she is based near the search site. She did not deny that the body is that of the little girl since police had expected to be dead based on the "reliable" information police had.
Chance had earlier told Digital Journal police have received “reliable” information that Shaniya, who was reported abducted from her home, is dead and her body is located in woods near Highway 87 and Walker Road.
“We have information that her body is there and we are searching,” said Chance. “We don’t have information that somebody has spotted a body, just information from a citizen that there may be a body.”
“We have 250 searchers and more volunteers have been turned away, we are getting their information in case we have to search again tomorrow,” she said.
She described the area as being populated with many homes and police and searchers will be looking through brush and woods to check out the tip. But she would not say if the information comes from two people who are in custody over the tragic case.
Chance again emphasized that police were certain about their information about the location of the body when they arrived at the specific scene this morning.
Shaniya's mom Antoinette Nicole Davis reported the child missing on Nov. 10.
On the same day, a hotel clerk in Sanford, North Carolina saw a man carrying the child in the lobby and toward an elevator.
Police confirmed the identity of the suspect seen on surveillance tapes retrieved from the hotel.
“Further investigation has identified the male in the surveillance footage to be 29-year old Mario Andrette McNeill,” said police in a press release at that time.
Detectives later located and arrested McNeill and they are continuing to question him about what he did with the child.
Over the weekend, police arrested Antoinette Nicole Davis and charged her with human trafficking, felony child abuse and prostitution. it is suspected she handed her child to someone and filed a false police report, one of the allegations police have leveled at her.
