All Blog Posts from Crimesider

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. - Basketball star Shaquille O'Neal was so moved by the horrible fate of 5-year-old Shaniya Davis, who police say was kidnapped, raped, and murdered in rural North Carolina, that he paid for the little girl's funeral.

O'Neal's spokeswoman says the Cleveland Cavaliers player was touched by the stories and got in touch with the family to see what he could do to help.

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FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. - Bradley Lockhart, the father of Shaniya Davis, the North Carolina girl who was kidnapped, raped, and murdered in early November, said he made the best decision he could at the time when he let the girl live with her mother, who has since been charged with prostituting her own daughter.

Lockhart said during a Tuesday interview on NBC's "Today" show that he regrets how the decision turned out, but thought he was making the right choice for the daughter he had raised himself.

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FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. - More than 2000 people joined Shaniya Davis' father, Bradley Lockhart, Sunday, at an emotional funeral for the North Carolina 5-year-old, who, police say, was raped, murdered, then thrown in a pile of trash bags and deer carcasses like she was someone's garbage.

"Don't let God's words and don't let his actions get you down," Lockhart told the packed congregation. "He did this for a reason."

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FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. - If police have it right, 5-year-old Shaniya Davis was raped, strangled to death, then dumped off a rural North Carolina road near a pile of deer carcasses in trash bags.

The man who they say is at the center of the horrible crime is Mario McNeill, who was seen on a hotel video surveillance tape carrying Shaniya, Nov. 10, the day she went missing.

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. - A man who allegedly robbed a Charlotte, N.C. bank took Highway Patrol troopers on a high speed chase Tuesday afternoon.

Turns out the suspect, 29-year-old Carlos DeShawn Burns, had a prior conviction for a more serious offense.

The Tuesday incident started just before 2 p.m. when a Wachovia Bank on West Sugar Creek Road in Charlotte was robbed and Burns took off, according to the FBI.

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NEW YORK - The autopsy of murdered North Carolina 5-year-old Shaniya Davis is now under way, according to Fayatteville, N.C., police, who hope to determine exactly how the little girl died.

Searchers discovered the girl's body Monday, nearly a week after her mother reported her missing from a mobile home park in Fayetteville, about 40 minutes south west of Raleigh.

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SANFORD, N.C. - Police still hope 5-year-old Shaniya Davis will be found alive, but that hope is dwindling.

About 200 searchers fanned out across several miles southeast of Sanford, N.C. on Monday based on "reliable information" that the missing girl's body may have been discarded, said Fayetteville Police spokeswoman Theresa Chance.

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FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. - Police have released horrifying still frames from a hotel surveillance video that shows a man carrying missing 5-year-old Shaniya Davis through a hotel hallway and towards an elevator.

Officials say a hotel worker called police to report seeing a child matching Shaniya's description, but by the time police got there, the man and child had left.

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FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. - North Carolina police now say that the mother of 5-year-old Shaniya Nicole Davis, who has been missing since Tuesday, forced her child into sexual servitude and prostitution.

Fayetteville police charged Antoinette Nicole Davis on Saturday with charges including human trafficking, child abuse involving prostitution, filing a false police report and resisting, delaying or obstructing an officer.

According to arrest documents cited by The Fayetteville Observer, Davis "knowingly provide(d) Shaniya Davis with the intent that she be held in sexual servitude" and she "permit(ted) an act of prostitution."

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FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. - Cumberland County authorities say foul play is suspected in the disappearance of Shaniya Nicole Davis. The 5-year-old girl went missing from her home in Fayetteville, N.C. Tuesday morning.

An Amber Alert was initiated for Shaniya just before noon, Lt. David Sportsman said.

Police responded to the home around 6:50 a.m., and Shaniya's mother told officers that she last saw her daughter at 5:30 a.m. The mother’s boyfriend and her sister, along with an infant and Shaniya's 7-year-old brother were also in the home when the girl went missing.

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