CHESTERFIELD, SC (WBTW) – Shortly after an AMBER alert was issued Tuesday afternoon for a missing baby in Chesterfield County, the sheriff’s office confirms the baby was found lifeless inside a box near the mother’s home.
Chesterfield County Sheriff Jay Brooks says the abduction of 11-month-old Harlee Lane Lewis was reported around 2 p.m. Tuesday. The baby’s mother told deputies she was walking to her mailbox on Daisy Lewis Drive, off of Jackson Drive, with the child when a tan colored SUV stopped in the middle of the road.
A white male wearing a black coat, toboggan and one black glove got out of the vehicle and punched her multiple times in the head, the mother reported to deputies. The man, who was reportedly around 6-foot-2 inches tall, then grabbed the 11-month-old baby girl and left in the SUV. The mother said she had never before seen the man who assaulted her.
The AMBER Alert for Harlee Lane Lewis said the baby girl was wearing a purple onesie.
A press release from the sheriff’s office just moments after the AMBER alert was issued said deputies found the body of the child hidden inside a diaper box about 1,000 yards from the home.
Spokesperson for the Chesterfield County Sheriff’s Office, Leighton Bell, says the child’s mother, Breanna Lewis, has been taken into custody as the primary suspect in the death of her child.
Lewis is charged with filing a false police report and improper disposal of human remains, according to the sheriff.
Other family members are also being questioned, Bell says.
“After her story started falling apart we had a feeling that something had happened to that baby that was not a kidnapping that she admitted,” Sheriff Brooks told News13.
Sheriff Brooks says the mother admitted to investigators that she made up the story about the assault and the abduction.
“There was never a kidnapping. There was never an assault, and there’s nobody to worry about,” Brooks said. “We then got very concerned about the child.”
Brooks said officers searched Lewis’ home, but didn’t find anything.
“We started in a big circle around the house, and it got bigger and bigger and bigger,” he said. “About a thousand yards behind the house, very grown up with trees, shrubbery, briars, the deputy noticed a diaper box that had not been rained on,” he continued. “He eased over to it, eased the lid up, and there was a one-year-old baby in a plastic bag inside that box.”
Brooks said Lewis was incoherent when officers arrived to the scene.
“She kept saying that she had passed out. She didn’t remember what happened to the baby,” the Sheriff said.
Brooks said officers shut the box, and waited for a forensics team to arrive.
“The baby’s been transported to the morgue by the coroner’s office, and she [Harlee] will be going to Newberry in the morning for an autopsy,” Brooks said. A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office said Wednesday morning than an autopsy was performed but the results are not being released at this time.
Brooks said Lewis does not have a criminal record.
“The autopsy will find out exactly what happened to the baby, but there was no one else here,” Brooks said. “No one had been here, no one had left. She was here with the baby, alone by herself all day.”
SLED and the FBI have been called in to investigate the case. SLED agents officially canceled the AMBER Alert at 4:51 p.m.