The Georgia Bureau Of Investigation Crime Lab is conducting an autopsy today on 15-year-old Caliyah McNabb whose body was found wrapped in cloth in a duffel bag under a log a short distance from her home in the Eagle Point trailer park in Covington, Georgia Sunday.
The Newton County, Georgia Sheriff's Office is holding the child's father, Chris McNabb, on a felony probation violation warrant.
Further charges may be filed depending on what the results of the autopsy and the investigation determine about how Caliyah McNabb died, according to a sheriff's office spokesman.
McNabb called at 10 a.m. Saturday telling the dispatcher the baby was missing.
The last time the child had been seen, he said, was at about 5 a.m. when she was fed. At that point, she was left in the room with her two-year-old sister. The parents noticed the child was missing when they woke up, McNabb said.
Deputies, search dogs activated to search for missing baby
Newton County deputies, search dogs, and volunteers began conducting their search at the trailer park, establishing a two-mile radius.
No Amber Alert was issued at that point since investigators had no information about any suspicious vehicles that had been seen in the area or any other information to go on other than that the baby was missing.
The search lasted throughout the day and continued into Sunday when the lifeless body of Cariyah McNabb, a child who had entered the world prematurely only two weeks earlier on September 24, was discovered.
The hunt for Caliyah's father began when authorities learned he had jumped out of his girlfriend's car at the intersection of Highway 36 and the Covington Bypass and took off on foot shortly after the two received word that the baby's body had been found. The warning was issued that anyone who saw McNabb should contact authorities and not approach him, since he was wanted on a felony probation violation warrant out of Bartow County, Georgia.
Dead child's father arrested at car wash
The Newton County Sheriff's Office arrested Chris McNabb without incident at a car wash a few moments after a convenience store clerk realized who he was and called 911. McNabb is being held on the probation violation warrant and as a Person Of Interest in the investigation into his daughter's death, according to a sheriff's office spokesman. It had only been a few hours earlier that McNabb, appearing distraught about the disappearance of his daughter, had shouted at television reporters, "That's my child. I want my kid, man." The baby's mother was questioned by sheriff's deputies but is not considered to be a person of interest.