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A little more than a week before Shaniya Davis vanished, her mother told Carey Lockhart, the aunt who helped raise the 5-year-old, that she'd never see Shaniya again.
Those words echoed in Lockhart's head Monday, hours before searchers pulled a body that police think was Shaniya's from a thicket of kudzu along the border of Lee and Harnett counties.
"If I'd only known ... ," Lockhart said Monday, her voice trailing off into sobs. She had helped rear the girl since infancy.
Shaniya disappeared a week ago from her home in Fayetteville, where she had been staying with her mother, Antoinette Davis, since the end of October. Police think Davis, who had reported her missing, had allowed her to be taken for "sexual servitude."
Davis is charged with human trafficking, felony child abuse and making a false police report. A man, Mario McNeill, was charged with kidnapping Shaniya after a surveillance video caught him carrying the girl toward an elevator at a motel in Sanford the morning she was reported missing.
It's not clear what arrangement police think Davis had made for Shaniya. Police have offered little explanation of Shaniya's possible abuse, although they have indicated that county social workers had been involved with Davis and her family.
Davis, who works at an assisted living facility, has no criminal history in North Carolina. McNeill has faced many drug charges but has no sex crimes on his record.
After a tip, searchers found a child's body Monday about 100 feet off a rural highway roughly six miles south of the motel where McNeill was spotted with Shaniya. Investigators were waiting for family members to positively identify Shaniya and would not comment on the condition of the body.
Davis, who is in police custody, could not be reached for comment. A judge appointed her a lawyer from the public defender's office, but no one had been assigned by late Monday.
Davis' sister, Brenda Davis, 20, told the Associated Press on Monday that she does not believe the charges.
"I don't believe she could hurt her children," Brenda Davis said. The sisters spoke to each other at the jail Sunday, and Brenda Davis recalled that her sibling said she would not do that to her daughter.
Bounced between homes
Shaniya has bounced between homes since birth, shared between a mother and a father who conceived her during a chance encounter one night. Carey Lockhart had been the girl's primary guardian because her father, Bradley Lockhart, worked long stretches as a building contractor at out-of-state jobs.
"There was no denying that she was his," Carey Lockhart said of the resemblance between Shaniya and her father.
Lockhart described Shaniya as a joyful girl who loved to dress up in pretty clothes and make her cousins laugh. She was a kindergartner at Morganton Road Elementary School in Fayetteville.
Though Bradley Lockhart and Antoinette Davis never married, they shared responsibility for Shaniya from the start. Davis' interaction with her daughter was typically limited to occasional weekend visits, Lockhart said. Their custody arrangement was never formalized by the courts.
But 21/2 weeks ago, Lockhart said, the informal parenting arrangement dissolved.
Shaniya went to visit her mother on Oct. 31. Lockhart said she packed Shaniya enough clothes for two days and expected to pick her up that Sunday.
But on Sunday morning, Lockhart said, Davis called and told her that she'd never see Shaniya again. Lockhart said Davis was angry that she had disciplined Shaniya for getting into a fight with her cousins.
"I was at a loss; I had no idea what to do," said Lockhart, who had no formal custody of Shaniya and could not demand her return.
"I knew when (my brother) came home, we were going to have to go to court and make some changes so we didn't have to endure this," Lockhart said.
That resolution never came. Bradley Lockhart had not returned from a job in Oregon when Shaniya disappeared.
Last Tuesday, Lockhart rang his sister with bizarre news. A neighbor called him to say that police were looking for Shaniya.
As they were talking on the phone, police knocked on Carey Lockhart's door. They had found her name listed as a guardian at Shaniya's elementary school.
A million thoughts raced through Carey Lockhart's head: Maybe her mother was hiding her? Maybe someone wanted to collect a ransom from her brother?
She peppered police with questions. They grilled her right back. She feared they suspected she had done something to Shaniya. She buckled in tears and remembers police relenting.
"I was about to die," Lockhart said. "I cannot describe the devastation. All the things I could have done different."
