On May 16, authorities in Dallas, Texas, received a report of a four-year-old boy found violently murdered on the streets near Wheatland Road and Mountain Creek Parkway earlier that morning.
CNN reported that Police Executive Assistant Chief Albert Martinez said, “A child was murdered through a violent act. We believe an edged weapon was used.”
Antwainese Square, who lives in the area, told Dallas News that she was jogging that morning when she discovered the boy’s body after initially assuming that he was a dog.
The woman said that upon realizing it was a child’s body, she called authorities, who arrived at the scene and pronounced the boy dead.
“That’s when I noticed the baby had ants at the bottom of his feet, so I knew he was deceased then,” Square told the news outlet. “It was heart-wrenching because this baby could have been no more than [age] 5.”
“As a mother, this just — it breaks my heart,” she said. “It breaks my heart. And now I’m afraid. Now I’m paranoid. Because I don’t know what happened, I don’t know what’s going on. I mean just knowing that someone out there is capable of killing a child, that alone is just unsettling. So I am praying that that baby gets justice.”
“Even us as police officers, we are shocked,” Martinez added. “We’re very angry about what has happened to the small child.”
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Police believe that the little boy found was a local to the neighborhood.
“We will pursue justice, whoever did this, and bring some sort of closure — not only to his family but to our community,” Martinez reportedly said.
Darriynn Brown was arrested and taken to Dallas County jail early Sunday on the charge of kidnapping and theft in connection with the killing of the boy, police said.
According to jail records, Brown is being held on a $750,000 bond, but no details have been released about what led to Brown’s arrest.
