It took hours of searching, but police found a missing little girl in the early hours of Saturday morning. One-year-old Zyia Roch-Quelle Alyssa Turner hadn't left her grandmother's Detroit home at all, it seems. The baby was found inside the closet, buried under some 20 pounds of clothing.
It's a heartbreaking end to what is already a sad story. Zyia's family called police late Friday afternoon, thinking she was gone. It would take hours for police to find her body inside the house ... after they searched the neighborhood.
According to police, her mom left the 17-month-old in the care of an uncle so she could go to a medical appointment. He went into his own bedroom, leaving little Zyia and some other children unsupervised for a short period of time.
Kind of makes you wonder why they didn't start the search for little Zyia inside, doesn't it? I'm not a cop, but we are talking babies after all. Crawling babies. Kids who love to disappear into any section of the house and hide.
I know parents who have found their kids under their own cribs after their backs were turned for just a second. Heading to the closet isn't exactly ... rocket science. So I'm more than a little curious how it took nine hours (the time between 4 p.m. when she was reported missing and 1 a.m. when she was found by a cadaver dog) until this missing baby was discovered.
I don't blame the family right now. I blame the searchers. What happened to common sense, people? Can you imagine the agony this family went through?
It seems like this isn't the first time police have found the body of a missing child closer to their own home than you would expect. Last week a missing boy in Michigan was found under his porch -- although reports are now pointing to the body having been moved. Zyia, on the other hand, seems to have spent the sad last moments of her life right there in the closet. And that makes my heart hurt.
What is the first thing you do when you can't find your child? Where is the very first place you would search?
Image via brianteutsch/Flickr
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Comments 89
So dad and uncle still live with their mother, along with 8 or 9 other people. Dad goes to the park and can't take his daughter. Mom has a morning doctor appt but doesn't come back till she gets a call the baby is missing. Where were her other kids? And according to people commenting on other articles, if you check google earth for this house there are 5 men sitting on the porch pointing some kind of rifle at the google van. Classy. Poor kid didn't have a chance.
Well, one thing we all know for sure: Writers for "The Stir" are all incompetent when it comes to researching or reporting the facts of ANY story. Either they ought to have the honesty to put a huge OPINION or EDITORIAL stamp on every article, or the site editors and publishers should do their job and demand writers exercise at least a bare minimum of responsibility and journalistic integrity.
The other alternative? This site could actually hire journalists instead of incompetent wanna-bes.
I dont think your first instinct would be my kids possibly burried under clothes in the closet. I would also think they got out, if you looked around the house and didnt see her. You would assume if she were trapped in the house you would have heard cries but perhaps they were muffled by the clothing.
This is a sad and confusing story. I don't understand how this child got under a pile of clothing. Did it fall on the baby? I just cannot imagine it. This is so sad regardless. I do wonder if there were so many clothes in the closet, was the rest of this home safe enough for children to be in? Apparently not, considering what happened. I guess I'm just wondering why the parents did not think that maybe the place needed to be cleaned up before the child was left there. This is sad, as I have already sad, I guess I am wishing something could have happened that would have prevented this awful outcome.
Oh my goodness, I just found the video of this house and the "bedroom" with the closet where the little girl supposedly died has to be the filthiest thing I have ever seen outside of episodes of hoarders and that is no exaggeration. Why would ANY parent, even a poor young parent, leave his/her child in such circumstances? It's disgusting.
TLvitale I'm right there with you.. I sent a message of my concerns with this exact thing. i understand news is news but we are moms here. a lot of us new moms dealing with postpartum issues. The last thing we need is 5 headlines a day about horrific stories of dead or abused children.