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. - A team of about 20 people continues to investigate the rape and slaying of Shaniya Davis, a 5-year-old girl who was allegedly sold into sexual slavery by her mother before she was murdered.

"There are a plethora of leads that we're following up on," said Chief Tom Bergamine of the Fayetteville police department, which is leading the probe.

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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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NEW YORK - Ann Summers, grandmother of murdered 5-year-old Shaniya Davis, is strongly defending her daughter, who is accused of selling Shaniya as a sex slave to the man that, police, say, eventually killed her.

"She did not harm her kids. I was there, I should know," Summers said of her daughter Antoinette Davis.

Summers had more choice words for Mario Andrette McNeill, the man accused of raping and killing Shaniya on the same day her mother reported her missing.

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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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When Shaniya Davis, 5, was reported missing in North Carolina on November 10, 2009, suspicion turned to a man described as her mother's boyfriend. But he was let go, and police targeted another man spotted on hotel surveillance footage holding the child. Then, authorities arrested the girl's mother and accused her of offering her daughter for prostitution, hoping Shaniya was still alive, but fearing the worst.

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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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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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NEW YORK - The story of Shaniya Davis gets more gruesome as it unravels.

A dog trainer who helped look for the missing North Carolina 5-year-old says searchers overlooked her body at first because all they saw were deer carcasses in trash bags.

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FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. - Investigators handling the death of Shaniya Davis say they can't file any more charges until they decide where the crimes took place.

Fayetteville police had said they planned to file more charges in Shaniya's death, the 5-year-old North Carolina girl whose body was found Monday beside a rural highway in Lee County.

But Police Chief Tom Bergamine said Wednesday they won't file more charges until jurisdiction is determined.

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