BREAKING: Tyler Dasher: Missing Baby Found Dead at Edge of Cemetery
Update on Nov. 17 at 11:13 a.m. ET: Shelby Dasher: Not Guilty Plea Entered at Arraignment; On Suicide Watch
St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch confirmed Tuesday night in a press conference that that two people walking dogs found the body of missing 13-month-old baby Tyler Dasher near a path at the edge of the New St. Marcus Cemetery close to the River Des Peres Parkway, according to reports.
The discovery ended a frantic four-hour search for the boy, who was reported missing about midday Tuesday after his mother awoke to find him gone from their Affton home. He was found about 3:30 p.m. CT, mere blocks from the family home in the 7700 block of Clevedon Street in Affton, Missouri.
Police said that the medical examiner's office did not immediately determine Tyler's cause of death and no one has been arrested in connection with the boy's death, according to the St. Louis Post Dispatch.
Police also said Tyler's mother and grandmother were the only adults in the house Monday night and Tuesday morning, and that Tyler's father lives elsewhere in the metropolitan area. Yet, there were no signs of anyone breaking into the house.
No one has been identified as a suspect, nor has anyone been eliminated as a suspect, Fitch said. Anyone that would take a child into a wooded area like this needs to be dealt with severely by the criminal justice system.
Tyler's mother, Shelby A. Dasher, 20, put him to bed about 10:30 p.m. Monday, overslept this morning and reported him missing to police after she awoke about 11 a.m., according to FOX2now in St. Louis.
There is no way to explain how this child got out of his crib, out of his room and out of the house, said Officer Rick Eckhard of the St. Louis County Police Department to the Post-Dispatch.
One witness, a neighbor, however, said she became suspicious at about 11:30 p.m. Monday after seeing a car with a loud exhaust system make a U-turn on the block and drive off. Another witness told police he saw a man walking with a child wrapped in a blue blanket along a street near Rogers Middle School, about a mile from the Dasher home, about 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, wearing a hooded sweatshirt and dark pants.
The Post-Dispatch also reported that the police issued a SARA Alert (St. Louis Area Regional Amber Alert) Tuesday afternoon for Tyler, and soon after, began searching the Affton area for the missing toddler. River Des Peres Parkway was shut down to traffic at Gravois Avenue and crime scene tape surrounded some of the cemetery's headstones.
Police also closed Clevedon Street between Seth and Third avenues and were searching the area using police dogs, a helicopter and a tactical team.
Meagan Mayer, a childhood friend of Dasher's, said Dasher and Tyler's father had no domestic problems, believing that Tyler's father would never take and kill him.
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