Police Have 'Person Of Interest' In Girl's Death

CHICAGO (STNG)  -- A “person of interest” is reportedly in police custody Friday afternoon for the slaying of a 9-year-old girl found dead by her father in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood on the South Side on Tuesday.

 
Relatives of Mya Lyons say police told them the girl was slashed in the neck and abdomen and had been sexually assaulted. Her body was found in an alley early Tuesday in the 8400 block of South Gilbert Court in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood.

A man, who is a “person of interest” and not a family member of the girl, is in police custody Friday afternoon, but no charges had been filed as of 3 p.m., according to a source.

The person of interest, a man in his 30s or 40s, was arrested sometime between 8 and 10 p.m. Thursday after possibly telling his friends he had been in the alley where Mya was found.

He told investigators he is a “scrapper”-- someone who collects scrap metal -to sell. He allegedly admitted to police he was in the alley and said that if had stayed longer, he could have saved her, according to the source, who said the person of interest may be mentally unstable.

The wounds on Mya’s body were all on her right side torso area, leading investigators to believe the crime was committed by a left-handed person, and the person of interest is left-handed, according to the source, who said the man has a cut on his right hand that dental forensics investigators believe may have been caused when Mya bit him.

Investigators are in the process of obtaining a search warrant to look at items inside his home.

Family members contacted Friday afternoon said police had not notified them of the man being questioned as of 3:45 p.m.

Mya lived with her mother Erica Barnes in Addison, but for the last three years had been spending part of the summer with her father Richard Lyons in the 8400 block of South Gilbert Court.

At some point Monday night, the family realized she was missing.

“Everybody was like, where is she,” her father said. “We went looking for her and I found her in the alley. They dumped her in the alley’’ at the end of the block near his home,  Lyons, breaking down, said.

Lyons rushed his daughter to Jackson Park Hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 2:10 a.m. Tuesday, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner's office.

An autopsy Tuesday showed she died of multiple injuries from an assault, according to the medical examiner's office, which ruled the death a homicide.