Baby found on Ohio doorstep doesn't belong to missing woman
UNIONTOWN, Ohio — A baby girl found on an Ohio doorstep does not belong to a missing pregnant woman, the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department said yesterday.The baby was discovered about 45 miles from the home of Jessie Davis, who was nine months pregnant with a girl when she disappeared last week.
A woman admitted leaving the newborn on the doorstep, Wayne County Sheriff Thomas Maurer said. The case has been turned over to the Wayne County prosecutor’s office.
“This incident is not related to the ongoing investigation by the Stark County Sheriff’s Office in the disappearance of Jessie Davis,” Maurer said in a news release.
Davis, 26, was reported missing one week ago yesterday after her mother found the young woman’s bedroom in disarray, the furniture overturned and Davis’ young son home alone.
The two-year-old boy, who may be the only witness to his mother’s disappearance, told investigators: “Mommy was crying. Mommy broke the table. Mommy’s in rug.”
Yesterday, some 250 volunteers lined up for a second day to help search surrounding fields and woods for any sign of Davis. More than 1,800 volunteers had turned up Thursday to scour back yards, vacant fields and a Christmas tree farm.
Davis’ mother, Patricia Porter, was the last person to speak to Davis on June 13 and said she’s focused on finding her daughter.
“We are not stopping and whoever’s done this, I hope they don’t think that we’re going home,” she told ABC’s “Good Morning America” yesterday. “No one’s going home and we are not stopping until we find her and find who did this to her.”
When Porter was asked yesterday by NBC’s “Today” show if she considered Bobby Cutts Jr., the father of Davis’ two-year-old son and unborn baby, a suspect, she replied: “Yes, he’s a suspect.”
“I still pray that it’s not him,” she said. “That doesn’t mean that I don’t think he’s a suspect, as well.”
Authorities have talked with Cutts, a Canton police officer, and searched his home, but investigators have repeatedly said he is not a suspect. Cutts, 30, says he had nothing to do with Davis’ disappearance.
Davis’ father searched with volunteers on Thursday, but her family is no longer participating.
“It’s too stressful every time a dog comes across something,” her sister Whitney said.
Scott Wheeler, 39, of East Canton, volunteered to search yesterday for 2[1/2] hours before work. He brought a flashlight and insect repellent, and organisers cautioned searchers to be ready for rough terrain, saying shorts and sandals would not be sufficient.
Some searchers had chest-high walking sticks and golf clubs to check the underbrush.
Porter said yesterday that Davis’ young son, Blake, was keeping everyone motivated and displaying so many characteristics of his mother. She described Jessie Davis as her best friend, a woman without enemies who “always had a big smile on her face.”
Blake “has periods where he just lays his head down on the couch and has this horrible look of sadness, and then the next moment he’ll have this big, beautiful smile. He really is what keeps us going,” she told ABC.
