911 call: 'He's got my baby!'
Hours after mother pleads for help, daughter found dead in park
By Jane Prendergast and Eileen Kelley
Enquirer staff writer
Darius Myrick, left, has been charged in connection with the death of his 20-month-old daughter Aliyah Starling Myrick, right.
MOUNT AUBURN - More than 12 hours after a mother tried to free her 20-month-old daughter from her estranged husband's arms, the child's body was found by a passer-by Friday morning in a city park.
Police say Aliyah Starling Myrick was snatched from her Over-the-Rhine apartment a little after 9 p.m. Thursday as her mother, Lanetta Myrick, unloaded groceries.
Lanetta Myrick called 911 as she and a neighbor chased the girl's father, Darius Myrick, who ran down the street with the toddler, threatening to hurt her and calling her Satan's daughter.
"He's going down Central Parkway with my baby," Lanetta Myrick yelled over her phone to the dispatcher, as she and a neighbor tried to follow him in a car.
"He's got my baby!"
The dispatcher told her to return home, that the police couldn't get into a high-speed chase over the issue and that if the man is the girl's father, he "has a right to have his child."
Lanetta Myrick told the dispatcher that she had custody and Darius Myrick was on drugs and has mental problems.
Her call resulted in an Amber Alert being issued about six hours after the incident. That prompted television stations to run pleas to help find the girl, led Artimis to put notices on its highway signs and triggered a system of automated phone calls to neighbors.
Amber Alerts usually are reserved for cases that involve abductions by strangers. In this case, Cincinnati police issued the alert about 3 a.m. after determining that the threats made against the child were credible.
Myrick, 32, was arrested about 9 a.m. in Over-the-Rhine after a man who knew him - and had seen the Amber Alert - followed Myrick and called police. He had blood and leaves on his clothes, suggesting that he'd been in a wooded area, police said.
Family members are upset that an Amber Alert wasn't issued sooner and hold police responsible for Aliyah's death. They can't grasp how a man could flee with a baby to a park miles away and kill her without being stopped.
"They killed her," Lanetta Myrick said. "They killed her. Why did they do that? He walked for a while with that baby and didn't nobody catch him. I was running around all night long, and not one police officer was looking for him."
Chatter on police scanners throughout much of Thursday night spoke of police from many districts in the city looking for the little girl with a red checked shirt and blue jeans being carried by a man with a horizontal-striped rugby shirt and work boots.
Police found Aliyah's body about 10:15 a.m. in Inwood Park off Vine Street. They were led there by relatives, who said Myrick liked to hang out in the park and liked the wooded trail that extends down from the back of Christ Hospital.
Police Chief Tom Streicher said it appeared Aliyah had been there for several hours.
The little girl's body - she was 2-feet-6 and weighed 23 pounds - was found by a man walking along the trail from the top as Officer John Mendoza and his dog, Caesar, were coming up from the bottom.
Streicher defended his department. He said he listened to the 911 call repeatedly, and the dispatcher did absolutely nothing wrong.
"When you lose a child, a (20)-month-old baby, I think it's a natural tendency to lash out at anybody you can," Streicher said. "It's just a very difficult situation. And if it helps them (to) grieve (by blaming) the police, we can take that."
Friday afternoon, Lanetta Myrick pounded her fists in her lap and wailed.
"I told them this person has a mental problem, and you need to catch him now," she said from her mother's porch in the city's Northside neighborhood.
She said her estranged husband always lurked around her apartment. Her biggest fear was that he would harm the children, she said. Aliyah was in her older brother Boots' arms when their father spotted them Thursday, she said. The boy said his father tried to get him to go with him as he snatched Aliyah away.
That's when Lanetta Myrick gave chase.
"I was chasing him this way and running that way trying to get my baby out of his arms," she said. "And then I stopped and I realized I wasn't gonna be able to catch him."
She said she called 911 twice, once while on foot and the second time in a car as she scoured the area looking for her daughter.
"If you are moving, we cannot send police out," a dispatcher told her, urging her to stop giving chase and to come back and speak to the police. "...We cannot keep sending police officers all over the city if you keep moving."
The discovery of the dead baby prompted Streicher, who doesn't usually visit crime scenes, to go to the park. "She's a baby," he said. "All the resources of our department have to be involved."
Police said Myrick behaved strangely when they arrested him, staring blankly at times and going limp so that officers had to carry him. They took him to the Psychiatric Emergency Services unit at University Hospital, where he remained late Friday. He is charged with aggravated murder and was being treated at the hospital while under police guard.
The chief thanked the unidentified man who spotted Myrick on Friday morning and called police, saying that was proof that the Amber Alert helped. "Thank God we've got a citizen who's interested enough to call us," he said.
Friday also was the first time in officials' memory that a local child who was the subject of an Amber Alert was found dead.
The cause of Aliyah's death was not released. Her body was taken to the Hamilton County coroner's office for an autopsy.
Myrick's relatives said he is a U.S. Coast Guard veteran who's had mental problems for years.
Sometimes, they said, he would say he'd been stationed in the Bermuda Triangle.
Myrick was arrested in July and charged with criminal trespassing after he'd been asked to leave the same McMicken Avenue home from which the girl was snatched. There was a warrant out for his arrest on that charge.
The neighbor who drove the girl's mother as they followed Myrick got involved after she heard someone outside her apartment screaming that her baby had been stolen.
Elizabeth Morgan said she saw a man carrying the girl. She said he was making religious statements that didn't make sense, Morgan said. On a court document Myrick signed last year after being charged with disorderly conduct, he wrote his name, followed by "Jesus Christ."
Family members tried for years to get him psychological help but could never imagine he'd hurt his daughter, his brother-in-law, Cory Owens, said.
Myrick's sister, Danyelle Myrick, stood at the edge of the park crying Friday afternoon. She said her brother and the girl's mother had been married since the early 1990s and had three children - Boots, 10, Aliyah and an infant.
Danyelle Myrick said she spoke with her brother Friday morning before the girl's body was found.
"He was like, 'She's OK,' the sister said. "I'm like, 'What do you mean? Where is she?' "
Father Kills Baby Daughter
Father Kills Baby Daughter
The dispatcher told her to return home, that the police couldn't get into a high-speed chase over the issue and that if the man is the girl's father, he "has a right to have his child."
Lanetta Myrick told the dispatcher that she had custody and Darius Myrick was on drugs and has mental problems.
Had she not listened to the dispatcher, her daughter may be alive.
Her call resulted in an Amber Alert being issued about six hours after the incident.
It took them 6 hours to conclude the child was in danger? WTF?
Streicher defended his department. He said he listened to the 911 call repeatedly, and the dispatcher did absolutely nothing wrong.
Bullsh*t!
He had a warrant out for his arrest. If he had been arrested, maybe this could have been avoided; maybe not. We'll never know.:-5
This story has me infuriated.
Lanetta Myrick told the dispatcher that she had custody and Darius Myrick was on drugs and has mental problems.
Had she not listened to the dispatcher, her daughter may be alive.
Her call resulted in an Amber Alert being issued about six hours after the incident.
It took them 6 hours to conclude the child was in danger? WTF?
Streicher defended his department. He said he listened to the 911 call repeatedly, and the dispatcher did absolutely nothing wrong.
Bullsh*t!
He had a warrant out for his arrest. If he had been arrested, maybe this could have been avoided; maybe not. We'll never know.:-5
This story has me infuriated.
Father Kills Baby Daughter
Peg wrote:
"The chief thanked the unidentified man who spotted Myrick on Friday morning and called police, saying that was proof that the Amber Alert helped. "Thank God we've got a citizen who's interested enough to call us," he said.
"
Mother doesn't count then!! Sickening. I share your infuriation, Peg.
"The chief thanked the unidentified man who spotted Myrick on Friday morning and called police, saying that was proof that the Amber Alert helped. "Thank God we've got a citizen who's interested enough to call us," he said.
"
Mother doesn't count then!! Sickening. I share your infuriation, Peg.