REMEMBER THE STORY I POSTED ON THE GRANDMOTHER OF A BLK GIRL WHO WAS UPSET THAT HER GRAND-DAUGHTER WAS NOT GETTING PROPER NEWS COVERAGE BECAUSE SHE WAS BLK I AGREE WITH THAT BUT HERE IS A UDATE
GLENDALE, Ariz. — The police here arrested the mother of a missing 5-year-old girl on a child abuse charge on Monday and said they believed she might have played a role in the disappearance of the girl, Jhessye Shockley, who they said was presumed dead.
Ms. Hunter's daughter Jhessye disappeared in October.
“She's our No. 1 focus,” a police spokesman said of Ms. Hunter.
The mother, Jerice Hunter, was not charged with the girl’s disappearance, which has attracted national attention, but the police in this Phoenix suburb said that information they uncovered in the last week led them to believe that the girl was probably no longer alive and that her mother was somehow involved. A search of a landfill in the area may take place soon, the police said.
“Yes, she’s our No. 1 focus,” Sgt. Brent Coombs, a spokesman for the Glendale Police Department, said of Ms. Hunter at a crowded news conference, adding that investigators believe she “played a key role” in Jhessye’s disappearance.
Throughout much of the day, forensic experts with the Glendale Police Department and the F.B.I. were at the apartment where Jhessye was last reported seen to search for clues, Sergeant Coombs said.
Without providing details, police officials said the child abuse charge stemmed from an incident before the girl disappeared last month. Ms. Hunter has a history of child abuse, having served three and a half years behind bars in California for abusing her other children. She was pregnant with Jhessye when she pleaded no contest to those charges in 2005, and Jhessye lived with relatives while she was in prison.
On Oct. 11, Ms. Hunter called 911 to report that Jhessye had disappeared after she left her with her siblings and gone out to run some errands. Officers began a search, and Ms. Hunter and other relatives called for the public’s help in finding the girl, who was wearing jean shorts, a white T-shirt and pink flip-flops. Ms. Hunter, who is black, later criticized the national news media for giving more attention to missing white girls than to her daughter.
Asked by a television reporter in October whether she had ever hurt her daughter, Ms. Hunter grew livid, responding: “Do I look like I hurt my daughter? Do I look like I hurt my daughter? Do I look like I hurt my daughter?”
The police had long had suspicions about Ms. Hunter, who strenuously insisted that she was not involved in her daughter’s disappearance and complained that officers treated her as a suspect from the start. Recently, she refused police attempts to make her take a polygraph test, which Sergeant Coombs described at the news conference as a sign that she was not being cooperative.
Scrutiny of Ms. Hunter also stemmed from the fact that Arizona’s Child Protective Services removed her three other children, who range in age from 7 to 13, from the home soon after Jhessye’s disappearance. No explanation was given. When Ms. Hunter, who was pregnant when she reported Jhessye missing, gave birth at the end of October, the authorities removed the newborn from the home as well.
Relatives of the missing girl and her mother, some of whom attended the news conference on Monday, have been divided on what they believe occurred. Some suspect Ms. Hunter; others insist that she is innocent.
“If Jerice has something to do with it, she needs to be punished — and whoever else has something to do with it needs to be brought to justice,” said Tammy Hunter, a great-aunt of the missing girl.
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