Fayetteville police charged a 29-year-old man with first-degree murder Thursday in the death of 5-year-old Shaniya Davis, the missing girl found under kudzu off a rural highway this week.
A medical examiner's preliminary report shows the girl was killed, her death caused by asphyxiation, said Police Chief Tom Bergamine. In addition to the murder charge, Mario McNeill is charged with first-degree rape of a child.
"It is our severe hope that the Davis family may be able to put this horrific event behind them and begin the healing process," Bergamine said.
Shaniya disappeared last week from her home in Fayetteville, where she had been staying with her mother, Antoinette Davis, since the end of October. Police think Davis, who had reported her missing, had allowed her to be taken for "sexual servitude." Davis is charged with human trafficking, felony child abuse and making a false police report.
McNeill was initially charged with kidnapping Shaniya after surveillance video caught him carrying her toward an elevator at a motel in Sanford the morning she was reported missing.
After a tip, searchers found a child's body Monday about 100 feet off a rural highway roughly six miles south of the motel where McNeill was spotted with Shaniya. Bergamine said Thursday that police do not think the girl was killed at the hotel, but he offered few other details about the case.
It's not clear what arrangement police think Davis had made for Shaniya. They have offered little explanation of Shaniya's possible abuse, although they have indicated that county social workers had been involved with Davis and her family. Bergamine declined to describe either DSS involvement or the ties between Shaniya's mother and McNeill.
Shaniya has bounced between homes since birth, shared between a mother and a father who conceived her during a chance encounter one night. Her aunt, Carey Lockhart, had been the girl's primary guardian because her father, Bradley Lockhart, worked long stretches as a building contractor at out-of-state jobs.
The case has drawn national attention, and Bergamine's Thursday-night press conference aired live in its entirety. Shaniya's death has clearly scarred the Fayetteville community, Bergamine said, including his own officers, who called it the toughest case of their careers.
"You could drive yourself crazy trying to figure out, 'Why would anybody do this to an innocent girl?'" said Fayetteville police Capt. Mark Bridgeman.
Davis, who works at an assisted living facility, has no criminal history in North Carolina. McNeill has faced many drug charges but has no sex crimes on his record.
