Autopsy reveals N.C girl was raped and strangled

A small body found on Monday, in Sanford, North Carolina was identified as 5-year-old Shaniya Davis.

Shaniya was reported missing by her mother, Antoinette Davis, a week earlier. Davis said her daughter had disappeared from their mobile home in Fayetteville, 30 miles from where the body was found.

Surveillance videos taken from a hotel the day Shaniya was reported missing shows Shaniya in the company of a man, Mario Andrette McNeill.

Davis was “prostituting her child,” police spokeswoman Teresa Chance said after Davis’ arrest over the weekend.

Mcneill has been charged with kidnapping and Davis was charged with human trafficking.
Shaniya’s father made a tearful appeal before reporters. “It’s not the result I wanted, it’s not the result any father or family would want for their children,” he said. “But God has a greater calling for all of us.”

Cheyenne Lockhart, Shaniya’s half sister found it hard to believe that Davis had neglected Shaniya so horribly.

“She seemed like the sweetest woman,” Lockhart said. ”She didn’t come from much, but she had the sweetest voice, she had the sweetest personality, especially towards me. I would never think that she would do anything like that.”

Lockhart and Shaniya shared the same father.