A search for two Louisiana girls, who were abducted after their mother was killed, ended hours later in Mississippi where the children were found, one of them tragically dead.
Louisiana State Police issued an Amber Alert for the girls after their mother, Callie Brunett, 35, was found dead in her Louisiana home in Loranger, about 60 miles east of Baton Rouge, on 13 June.
She had been reported missing after no one had spoken with her since Tuesday, police said. A cause of death was not immediately released.
Investigators said the body of four-year-old Erin Brunett was found in a wooded area in Jackson. Jalie Brunett, six, was found with the suspect at the center of the Amber Alert, police said. She was taken to a Jackson hospital for treatment.
“He had the victim’s car along with her alive-and-well six-year-old child,” Chief Deputy Jimmy Travis of the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana told reporters.
Daniel Callihan, 36, of Louisiana, who had dated Brunett, was captured in Jackson, Mississippi, after a police chase and has been charged in connection to the abduction and the deaths, according to Jackson Police Chief Joseph Wade.
Wade said he did not believe Callihan was the father of the two children, WJTV reported.
“Horrible, horrible, tragic situation,” he said.
“You don’t want to see that as a chief. You don’t want to see that as a father, to see this baby that is on the ground that has lost her life. This is an innocent four-year-old child that’s no longer with us because of the actions of a coward, a coward who took this child from her family.”
Wade said officers contacted the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation’s human trafficking division about the case.
He said small animal cages were discovered in the wooded area where the children were found.
“He tried to do away with the children by taking them into this wooded area,” Wade said of the suspect, adding, “This was a horrible, horribly tragic situation that was committed by the actions of a coward.”