Police Find Missing N.C. Girl's Body

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 weeklong search, police said.

Searchers found Shaniya Davis' body southeast of Sanford, in central North Carolina, Fayetteville Police spokeswoman Theresa Chance told The Associated Press. Police did not say how she died.

"We were hoping that someone could carry her home," said Syd Severe, 42, a volunteer who came from Raleigh to help with the search. "It's just sick."

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. A first court appearance for Davis was scheduled Monday afternoon, and police said she did not yet have an attorney.

Authorities also charged Mario Andrette McNeill, 29, with kidnapping after they said surveillance footage from a Sanford hotel showed him carrying Shaniya there. Authorities said McNeill admitted taking the girl, though his attorney said he will plead not guilty.

Davis reported Shaniya missing on Tuesday. The investigation first led authorities to arrest a man named Clarence Coe, but charges against him were dropped a day later when investigators tracked down McNeill after receiving a tip from a hotel employee.

Additional information led investigators to a search site near Sanford on Sunday. They continued searching Monday, scouring miles of landscape, roads, ravines and fields on four-wheelers and with helicopters.

After Shaniya's body was found, a solemn group of searchers met quietly at a nearby fire station to ensure that all volunteers were accounted for.

A cluster of emergency vehicles and law enforcement personnel gathered where Shaniya's body was found, about a quarter mile from N.C. Highway 87. Authorities blocked access to the road, a rural area popular with hunters that is less than a mile from a large lakeside community.

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.

"I should've never let her go over there," he told The Associated Press on Saturday.

During an appearance on CBS' "The Early Show" Monday morning, Lockhart expressed hope Shaniya would be found.

"I've been feeling hopeful every day," he told co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez, "that someone out there would do the right thing and take my daughter somewhere to a hospital, police station, just anywhere safe, drop her off at Walmart, anywhere, I don't care. Just so somebody can find her and bring her back to the people that love her."

Lockhart raised Shaniya for four years with help from his sister, Carey Lockhart-Davis, who had been like a mother-figure for Shaniya. But Lockhard gave Shaniya to the girl's mother because, he says, she had a job, seemed more stable and told him she wanted the role of Shaniya's mom.

"I just want you to bring her back. She's an amazing, breathtaking individual," an emotional Lockhart-Davis told Rodriguez. "She has a calendar at school, and when you're good, your daily calendar, you get a little blue mark on it. And, every day, she came home with a blue mark. And she would walk in the door and she'd say, 'Aunt Carrie, I got another blue mark, I got another blue mark!' And then she'd get her treat and we'd go out back and we'd play and -- she was smart. And just so happy and full of joy. And I just ask that, at this time, please just let her go. She doesn't deserve this. Have a kind heart."

Lockhart said, when he heard of the accusations against Antoinette Davis, he felt totally numb. "Just everything inside of you falls out," Lockhart said. "You just lose all train of thought. Reaction is none. You just -- you just hope for the best."

He admitted he had some reservations about giving Shaniya back to her mother but, "She had been trying, and I know that she had been working for at least six months, and she had been trying to get her life back on track, and she said she had just recently got her own place. So I was wanting to give her a chance. She had asked if she could be a mother, and I felt that she was sincere in asking. And I figured to give her a chance."