James Chairez: Mother of Texas toddler missing since Thanksgiving arrested after blood found on crib sheets
SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS: Authorities have revealed that a mother was taken into custody on suspicion of abandonment after investigators found blood on the crib sheets of her missing toddler.
Eighteen-month-old James Chairez has been missing since Thanksgiving, according to San Antonio police. He was last seen on January 4 in surveillance footage with his mother at a Walgreens store. According to a police affidavit, his mother D’lanny Chairez, 20, has been spotted several times on security video since her son's disappearance, Fox News reported.
RELATED ARTICLES
Court documents show Chairez was arrested Tuesday on charges of abandoning or endangering a child. She was being held on a $250,000 bond and did not appear to have an attorney on file. However, she was scheduled to receive a court-appointed lawyer on Thursday and is due back in court on April 14, per the report.
Chairez did not cooperate with investigators while being interrogated about the whereabouts of her son. According to the affidavit, she told them she wasn't ready to be a mother and that he "deserves better." She had previously allegedly told a family member she had given her son up for adoption, but did not provide consistent answers about who was taking care of him, per the documents.
Investigators found human blood on a crib sheet at Chairez’s trailer, per the affidavit. However, authorities are still hopeful that the toddler is alive and somewhere in the San Antonio area. Dozens of officers, cadets, K-9 teams and an FBI squad of missing children investigators scoured a part in the city over the weekend following "credible information," but did not recover anything.
Authorities are now urging anyone with information about the toddler's whereabouts to connect with the San Antonio Police Department’s Missing Persons Unit at 210-207-7660.
According to local media, little James' father and maternal grandmother are serving prison sentences for the homicides of other family members. Fox 29 San Antonio reported how grandmother Patricia Flores pleaded guilty to murder charges after she did not bring a two-year-old grandchild to the hospital for nearly a week after he was severely scalded with hot water across his body. She eventually called 911 when the tot became unresponsive, and was later declared deceased.
Matthew Dempsey, James's father, is also in jail following his 2019 conviction for slashing his own mother's throat after he and an accomplice beat her with a baseball bat, per the San Antonio Express-News.
D'lanny Chairez's aunt Marison Gomez told the paper that she didn't think her grand-nephew was alive. “Her actions right now are speaking very loud. As hard as it is, I don’t think [he is alive]. Everything she’s said so far is a lie,” Gomez said of her niece.
Gomez told the San Antonio Express-News how she hated the uncertainty of not knowing where little James might be. She revealed how she had received several messages from scammers pretending to be human traffickers and asking for ransom in exchange for the child's safe return.
“You feel like you’re mourning someone who was really close to you, but yet they’re alive but you just can’t see them or touch them,” Gomez said. “I have them on my mind all the time.”