SANFORD, N.C. — A missing 5-year-old whose mother was accused of offering her for sex was found dead off a heavily wooded road in a rural area Monday, ending a week-long search, police said.
Searchers found Shaniya Davis’ body early Monday afternoon about 100 feet off a road southeast of Sanford, in central North Carolina, Fayetteville police spokeswoman Theresa Chance said. She declined to comment on a cause of death or the condition of Shaniya’s body.
“We’ve got a lot of people out at the scene right now that are torn up,” Chance said. “Detectives have been running off adrenaline to find this little girl and to bring her home alive.”
Two people have been charged in her disappearance, one of them her mother, Antoinette Davis, 25. Police charged Davis with human trafficking and felony child abuse, saying Shaniya was offered for prostitution.
In a five-minute court appearance Monday in Fayetteville, Davis provided one-word answers to the judge’s questions and held her hands in front of her, without handcuffs. She requested a court-appointed attorney and did not enter a plea.
Authorities also charged Mario Andrette McNeill, 29, with kidnapping after they said surveillance footage from a Sanford hotel showed him carrying Shaniya there.
Davis reported Shaniya missing Nov. 10. Investigators tracked down McNeill after receiving a tip from a hotel employee. Additional information led investigators to a search site near Sanford on Sunday and Monday.
Shaniya’s father, Bradley Lockhart, said he raised his daughter for several years but last month decided to let her stay with her mother. He had pleaded for her safe return.
Davis struggled financially over the years, but she recently obtained a job and her own place, so Lockhart said he decided to give her a chance to raise their daughter.
“I should’ve never let her go over there,” he said Saturday night.
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