The body of a missing two-year-old boy was found inside an alligator’s mouth in Florida ending the hunt for the child on Friday evening. The boy’s mother was found stabbed to death in her apartment a day earlier and the search for Taylen Mosley, of St. Petersburg, began the same day. Reported the New York Post.
His mother Pashun Jeffery, 20, was found dead in her Lincoln Shores apartment from stab wounds and the boy’s father has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder: for the child and the boy’s mother, the report further said.
According to the New York Post, St. Petersburg police Chief Anthony Holloway said that officers were investigating the area of Dell Holmes Park when they spotted an alligator with “an object in its mouth” inside Lake Maggiore.
He added that the officers then fired a round at the alligator killing it and forcing it to drop the child’s body. Taylen’s body was retrieved but police have not been able to ascertain if the boy died there or if he was dead already.
“We didn’t want to find him this way, but at least we can bring some closure to that family now. We’re sorry it had to end this way,” Police Chief Anthony Holloway said, as quoted by the New York Post.
The police found Jeffery dead from “multiple stab wounds” at around 2:30 PM on Thursday and began searching for Taylen after following a blood trail from her vehicle.
Taylen was found dead in an alligator’s mouth in Dell Holmes Park – around 10 miles from his mother’s home. The New York Post reported that officials said that a medical examiner is determining his cause of death.
Taylen’s father, 21-year-old Thomas Mosley, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Police said that he was a ‘person of interest’.
Thomas had checked himself into the hospital and was reported to be covered in cuts on his arms and hands, according to NBC News, reported the Daily Mail. As of Friday, Thomas is in the hospital, the police chief said.
The report mentioned citing investigators that the father of the boy was not talking to them.