Shaniya Davis, 5-years-old used as a prostitute by mother

November 16, 2009 by Baby Chums
Filed under: News

Shaniya Davis’ Mother Antoinette Davis from North Carolina, will face charges including prostituting her missing daughter, who police have now discovered dead.

Missing seen since Tuesday last week, Shaniya was last seen when a security camera recorded a man carrying her into a hotel room 40 miles from her home at a Fayetteville trailer park.

Mother Antoinette Davis, 25, has been charged with child abuse involving prostitution, human trafficking and filing a false police report.

Arrest papers quoted by the Fayetteville Observer said the mother “knowingly provide[d] Shaniya Davis with the intent that she be held in sexual servitude” and “permit[ted] an act of prostitution”.

The local highway patrol said it was looking for a man aged about 60 who was spotted driving in the area and may be involved.

Shaniya’s father, Bradley Lockhart, had previously raised her but had agreed to let her live with her mother after she got a regular job and a place to live.

He said at the weekend: “I should never have let her go over there,”

Over 200 police and volunteers scoured woodland off a main road outside Sanford after police said it had received “reliable information” that the child’s body may have been dumped there.

Today volunteers assisting in the search found the body of Shaniya about 100 feet off Walker Road, off of North Carolina Highway 87.

One man who found the body said the girl was lying on the ground and was wearing only a T-shirt.

Mario Andrette McNeill, 29, seen last Tuesday on hotel surveillance footage carrying Shaniya Davis through a hallway and then to an elevator has been charged with kidnapping. Police claim McNeill admitted the crime. His attorney, Allen Rogers says he will plead not guilty.

It’s not clear how, or if, McNeill and Antoinette Davis are related or whether he will also be facing murder charges.