After days of looking and prayer vigils, Audrii Cunningham, an 11-year-old woman from Livingston, Texas who went lacking final Thursday after being despatched to catch the college bus with an grownup household good friend, has been discovered useless. a household good friend has been charged along with her homicide, officers introduced Wednesday.
“I’m heartbroken by the information,” Polk County Sheriff Byron Lyons advised reporters at a information convention Tuesday. We’ll proceed to course of the proof that has been collected to make sure justice for Audria.”
Paperwork filed Wednesday in Polk County stated a household good friend, 42-year-old Don Steven McDougal, was charged with homicide, based on CNN.
Audria's physique was discovered within the Trinity River alongside US 59, Lyons stated, with a big rock tied round it. The rope used to tie the rock round her physique, investigators stated, was just like the one discovered inside McDougal's car throughout a site visitors cease two days earlier.
“The data we’ve got gathered on this legal investigation is substantial,” Lyons stated.
McDougal was described as a good friend of the woman's father, Joshua Cunningham, and lived in a trailer on property belonging to the woman's household, which incorporates her grandparents and different members of the family. Authorities say McDougal had a historical past of taking Audria to the bus cease or taking her to high school if she missed the bus.
McDougal's legal report dates again to a minimum of 2003. He has convictions for violent crimes and one for baby enticement, however he was not listed as a registered intercourse offender.
Elic Bryan III, who was a former affiliate of McDougal, advised Fox 26 Houston that the suspect in Audrii's homicide was convicted of aggravated assault with a lethal weapon after he attacked and practically stabbed him in 2010.
“We labored collectively in a quick automobile in Crosby doing an oil change. He appeared like a cool man. He'd hang around with me and my associates now and again, then it went south with us,” Bryan recalled.
“He received drunk one evening. We threw him out of the home and he got here again with a knife, slashed the tires and tried to stab me with the knife. I needed to run him off with the gun and the cops lastly got here out with the canine and received him.”
Bryan stated he wished he “would have shot him, to be trustworthy with you.”
“That's my solely remorse,” he advised the newspaper. “I didn't wish to do it then as a result of it could make you’re feeling dangerous. However trying again, perhaps I ought to have. With all of the allegations in opposition to him, he's clearly not a pleasant man. There's one thing fallacious along with his head.”
Lyons advised CNN that though McDougal joined the seek for Audria and was seen knocking on doorways and within the neighborhood, he was not satisfied he was real.
“It simply says to me that he's attempting to make it clear that he doesn't have any sport or that he's to not blame for her disappearance and that (he's) a part of the affected events that have been looking for her,” Lyons stated.
The legal grievance in opposition to McDougal states that “video footage and cellphone information place McDougal at three places of curiosity,” together with alongside the Trinity River the place authorities found the younger woman's physique.
On the third day of a prayer vigil held Sunday on the neighborhood and Veterans of Overseas Wars Submit 8568, Ray Epps, senior deputy commander of the Polk County VFW publish, remembered the younger woman as a light-weight in the neighborhood.
“She was a glowing, vivacious younger girl,” Epps stated, based on Fox4. “She got here up and helped him and stated, 'I wish to go dance.' so she went out and realized to bounce. You realize, that's the character kind. She lit up everybody's lives.”
Contact: leonardo.blair@christianpost.com Observe Leonard Blair on Twitter: @lebloir Observe Leonard Blair on Fb: LeoBlairChristianPost
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