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Boy's body found along I-275
By BRADY DENNIS, AMY HERDY and TAMARA LUSH
Then the 2-year-old boy soiled his pants. Police say Chouquer, 23, flew into a rage. "He beat him to death with his hands," said Polk County sheriff's Capt. W.J. Martin. Authorities said Chouquer wrapped the toddler, Alfredo Montez, in a bedspread dotted with 101 Dalmatians figures. When Chouquer's girlfriend returned from her methamphetamine run, the pair put the child's body in the trunk of their car, loaded up the other three children and fled the Polk County mobile home park, investigators said. Heading north on the interstate, they made a stop. "At some point along the way, they pulled over," Martin said. "(Chouquer) walked to the edge of the woods and dropped the kid."
The Pasco County man, who investigators declined to name, was driving north on I-275 Thursday morning when he saw a blanket on the side of the road, 5 miles north of Bearss Avenue. He thought nothing of it and continued north into Pasco. After hearing media reports about the search, the man returned to check. He called Hillsborough County deputies about 6:15 p.m. and said he had found the boy. The body lay about 30 feet off the road, down a slight embankment where thick grass meets a patch of underbrush. The body was still wrapped in the 101 Dalmatians comforter. Polk County sheriff's spokesman Scott Wilder said investigators were "gratified" to have found the boy, but he said it didn't dull the horror of Alfredo's death. "It just hurts me to think about it," Wilder said. "To throw this baby away on the side of the interstate, it just shocks your conscience." The case began on June 28, when Alfredo's mother, Jeanna Swallows, left him and his 4-year-old sister, Rheyna, with Chouquer and his 22-year-old girlfriend, Amandy Lawrence. Swallows, who admitted to having a drug problem, said she had gone to a job interview, though she was unable to say where the interview was, investigators said. Swallows said she returned to the Polk County mobile home June 29, June 30 and July 1 to pick up the children, and each time no one was home. She finally called Carmen Valdez, who also lived with the couple, and Valdez called authorities. Swallows, 21, said she hadn't called authorities herself because she had outstanding warrants for violating probation on a worthless checks charge. It was not clear whether Swallows would be charged with child abuse. "Whether she realized she was putting these children in danger remains to be seen," said Martin, the Polk Sheriff's captain. Records show that Swallows has numerous convictions for writing bad checks and once was charged with trafficking in marijuana. Deputies arrested Swallows on Tuesday on her outstanding warrants. At a court hearing on Wednesday, she temporarily gave custody of Rheyna to the girl's paternal grandmother. Investigators said they would notify Swallows late Thursday that her son's body had been found. They believe he was killed on July 1. Polk County officials said that after the couple dumped the boy's body, they drove to Albany, Ga., where Chouquer stayed with the couple's two children, a 2-year-old boy and a 7-month-old boy, while Lawrence, who is pregnant, drove back to Auburndale to drop Rheyna off with a cousin, Martin said. Lawrence returned to Georgia, and the couple drove on with their children to Amarillo, Texas. A relative wired them money and they continued on to Utah, police said. Authorities arrested Chouquer and Lawrence on Wednesday evening in Hurricane, Utah, where Chouquer's mother lives. Chouquer faces charges of first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse, police said. Lawrence faces charges of being an accessory after the fact to first-degree murder. State records show that neither Chouquer nor Lawrence has a criminal record in Florida. But Polk County officials said that Chouquer had served jail time in Nevada for child abuse charges stemming from an incident that involved Lawrence's children from a previous marriage. They said the young children, ages 5 and 6, were removed from the couple's home by child abuse investigators. After their arrest Wednesday in Utah, the couple gave investigators details about the location of Alfredo's body. But most of their information was vague, and some of it was wrong. The couple said they they left the body near a fence, north of Interstate 4, somewhere near a call box and an Ocala sign. They also said they left it off I-75, not I-275. Search crews of more than 200 people combed the east side of I-75 throughout Wednesday night and into the late afternoon Thursday in an unsuccessful search for the boy's body. Sheriff's deputies from Polk, Pasco and Hillsborough counties joined officers from the FBI, Florida Highway Patrol and Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Search helicopters circled above while K-9 dogs, horses, all-terrain vehicles and deputies on foot explored the ground below. Passers-by craned their necks in curiosity. The search spanned the length of Pasco County and 8 miles south into Hillsborough County, said Pasco sheriff's spokesman Kevin Doll. By 5 p.m., investigators began to wrap up the search. Then, at 6:15 p.m., the call came, leading to the discovery of the body off I-275. At the mobile home park in Auburndale, far from the media hordes and the massive search that swarmed far to the north, a chicken pecked at the ground in the front yard. Neighbors said cars constantly came and went from Chouquer and Lawrence's trailer. They said the music was played so loudly that neighbors often had to ask the couple to turn it down. "Oh, they partied," said Elbert Edwards, 70, a retired carpenter who lives two doors down. His wife, Minnie, 78, said she couldn't fathom such a tragedy. "It's terrible," she said. "I've been sick about what happened to that little boy." -- Times researcher John Martin contributed to this report, which also contains information from the Associated Press and The Ledger of Lakeland.
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Headlines From the Times local news desks |
On Thursday, after a massive two-day search that included dogs, horses, helicopters, all-terrain vehicles and at times more than 200 people, a passing motorist did what none of them could: He found the body believed to be that of Alfredo Montez.
