Law-enforcement officers trying to find missing Georgia toddler Quinton Simon again searched the home where he was last seen as the police chief revealed the case now includes a “criminal investigation.”
Forty FBI personnel have joined the hunt for the 20-month-old, including members of the child-abduction and rapid-deployment unit, officials said at a Monday press conference.
Quinton vanished on Oct. 5—after his mother texted his babysitter to say she didn’t need to watch him that morning. The mother, Leilani Simon, reportedly told police the boy’s biological father took him, but cops say that is not true.
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“He is not a suspect in this case,” Chatham County Police Chief Jeff Hadley told reporters.
Hadley has said he has no reason to think that Quinton isn’t alive but he acknowledged the possibility that something terrible had happened to the child.
“We’re looking at it from multiple fronts—one of it being a criminal investigation, as well as a missing child case,” he said.
“Everybody is being looked at,” he added. “Everybody is being interviewed.”
According to WJCL, Monday’s canvass included pumping the pool at the Savannah home of Quinton’s maternal grandmother, where Leilani and her boyfriend were living—despite an eviction proceeding by the grandmother.
“No one is living in peace,” the grandmother, Billie Jo Howell, wrote in her eviction petition.
Authorities have not released the 911 call that reported Quinton as missing, and Hadley says there is a good reason investigators are moving methodically.
“We want to make sure we do this as professionally and as expertly as we can, so if— and I say if—we have to prosecute anyone in this case, that we’ve done it right,” he said at the press conference.
The chief said he understands that people far beyond the county have become “emotionally invested” in the case and want answers about what happened to the boy.
“We are committed to finding those answers and we are committed to finding Quinton,” he said.
