The Chicago police on Tuesday arrested a suspect allegedly involved in the murder of a two-year-old whose dismembered remains were found at the Near West Side a year ago, the police said.
The police discovered the toddler's, Kyrian Knox, death after a human foot was found in the lagoon in the first week of September 2015. After a search operation, a child's head, one foot and two hands were also found near the location. A DNA analysis was conducted and Kyrian was found to be a match.
Kyrian was last seen when in August 2015, when his mother left him in the care of her family friend in Rockford, Illinois. Kyrian's mother, Lanisha Knox was moving to Chicago from Iowa at the time, the police said.
The family friend Kamel Harris was arrested by police on Monday, months after he reported the boy missing in September 2015. Harris filed the missing reports around two weeks after a dismembered body was of a boy was found near the Garfield Park Lagoon.
Reports state that the police authorities suspect the boy had been missing for almost a month prior to when they were alerted.
Chicago Police Commander Kevin Duffin said in a news conference Tuesday said, "He made a false report to the Rockford police that the baby had gone missing."
"The major break in the case was the fact that he had denied that the baby had ever been inside his vehicle. Once we took the vehicle with the search warrant, [we] tore out the carpeting and recovered the baby's blood in the vehicle," Duffin was quoted as saying by CNN.
Although police have not been able to find the cause of Kyrian's death, according to the statements made by witnesses Kyrian, who is lactose intolerant, may have had some milk which made him sick and he was crying all afternoon, the incident made Harris snap and he "couldn't deal with it anymore."
