Twenty-five-year-old Aaliyah Jack of Lake Charles was arrested in Mississippi after the body of her four-year-old son was found Monday in a body of water behind the Vinton Welcome Center. Calcasieu Parish Sheriff Stitch Guillory said but miraculously her one-year-old child was found alive about six miles away in a ditch. He said an autopsy will be performed on the four-year-old.
“We don’t know if he drowned, or we don’t know if he was dead before he went in the water. Only the autopsy can reveal that,” said Guillory.
Jack is charged with failure to report a missing child and is being held on a $300,000 bond. Guillory said detectives will interview Jack in Meridian, Mississippi and a motive has not been released.
Family members told authorities the children were last seen on Saturday and investigators believe the children were abandoned on Sunday. Guillory said this means the infant survived on his own for two days.
“Well, the crazy part is, is thank God we had a storm out there and we had cloud cover and rain, and so it kept the heat down and we honestly feel that helped him to survive these last two days out there,” said Guillory.
When news that a child’s body was found Monday at the Welcome Center on the Texas-Louisiana state line, Guillory said they received a call from a relative who believed the child could be Jack’s son. They also told investigators about the infant, so they returned to search for the one-year-old.
Miraculously Tuesday morning Guillory said a truck driver spotted the infant on I-10 eastbound near mile marker 10.
“Really when the truck driver saw him, he was crawling getting close to the roadway. So it’s a good thing that trucker was sitting up high and just happened to look over and saw him, and pulled over immediately,” said Guillory.
Guillory said the infant was taken to the hospital and appears to be ok and is in the custody of the Department of Children and Family Services.
