Deputy who found baby's body talks to News13

CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, SC (WBTW) – One of the two deputies who found the body of 11-month-old Harlee Lewis in a diaper box on Tuesday says she became skeptical of the child’s mother, Breanna Lewis’, account of the alleged kidnapping when she arrived on the house and noticed the evidence at the scene didn’t match up with Lewis’ story.

Major Briana Davis with the Chesterfield County Sheriff’s Office says she and one other deputy arrived on scene at 19-year-old Breanna Lewis’ house after she told police that a stranger attacked her and ripped her baby from her arms and drove off.

She tells News13 that her antenna went up as a law enforcement officer and as a mother when she didn’t see footprints in the dirt road where Lewis claimed the abduction took place.

“If someone snatches my baby, I’m running for help. And I didn’t see any tracks running back toward the house,” Major Davis said. “After 22 years in law enforcement, you’ll develop a sense of things you look for when you get to a scene. And I knew I had a gut feeling that it wasn’t going to be good news at the end of this.”

Major Davis also says she got suspicious of Lewis’ story when she saw fresh car tracks leading behind the house. She and her partner continued to follow the tracks and eventually came across footprints. The other deputy was ahead of Major Davis and saw the box first. He called to her for assistance. Once they saw it, they had a gut feeling of what was inside.

“At that time, I went up to the box and he said ‘you want to check it?’ He passed me a glove. I placed the glove on, checked the baby for a pulse or heartbeat. Didn’t find a pulse or a heartbeat,” Major Davis recounted. “At that time, I called the sheriff and let him know that we had located the baby.”

The condition of the box also struck them as suspicious. According to Major Davis, they could tell it was a brand new box and wasn’t something that had been sitting out for a long time.

“Another thing that stood to us about the box was it wasn’t faded. It was rained on. It wasn’t an old box being out there for a couple of months or a year or so. The box was fresh and that’s something else that caught the deputy’s eye,“ she said.

Lewis is the primary suspect in the murder of baby Harlee. She is charged with improper disposal of human remains and filing a false police report. She is being held at the Chesterfield County Detention Center. An autopsy for Harlee is now complete but authorities have not released the results.