North Carolina toddler, 2, with special needs found dead inside a bucket at family friend's home
CHOWAN COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA: A two-year-old boy with special needs was found dead near a family friend's home after being left under their care in Edenton, North Carolina on Friday, October 7.
CorNyeah Lindsey dropped her son Dinari off in the morning on the day of the incident on Virginia Road. She called the couple she left the child with "like grandparents to the young boy." "I trusted them," Lindsey said in her statement. She added that she received a call a few hours later which informed her about Dinari being hospitalized.
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A 2-year-old boy was in the care of family friends when he died at a home in Edenton on Friday, according to the boy's mother. https://t.co/j3l56Mmjrp
— WNCT (@wnct9) October 11, 2022
Having reached the hospital, a sheriff's deputy told her that Dinari had died, according to WAVY. "He told me [Dinari] didn’t make it. And I went crazy," she added. Chowan County Sheriff’s Department stated to the news outlet that they responded to the residence following reports of a missing child.
"The sheriff’s deputy told me that he had seen an older man at the end of the driveway looking like, ‘Oh shoot. Did you see me? Or did you not see me?’ He said it looked suspicious. So he went to the man and was like, ‘What do you need?’ The man said to him, 'I need help finding a 2-year-old boy with autism.' The deputy said he knew then and there that the story wasn’t going to add up,'” Lindsey said as per the outlet. Dinari was autistic, blind without his glasses and wore hearing aids, his mother said.
A detective found the toddler upside down in a bucket filled after noticing his feet among other items outside of the house. Lindsey claimed he was in three inches of water, as per Law&Crime. On Monday, October 10, authorities said that the toddler was found unresponsive. Lindsey was informed that her son was not wearing his glasses or his hearing aids. When they questioned the woman, whose care the child was under, why she had not put the boy in a playpen near the bathroom while she was away, she started crying hysterically.
Later, Lindsey took to Facebook to express her grief. "My son was born blind and have a moderate [sic] hearing loss so if you didn’t see the bucket how could’ve he seen it. Without his glasses he can’t see what we can see," the heartbroken mother wrote. The case is still under investigation. No charges have been filed while an autopsy is pending per WAVY.