Update: Willie Wilson was found not guilty of murder. Read more here.
Original story:
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. (Sept. 2, 2014)— Authorities searched a creek on Indianapolis’ near west side in connection with a missing 6-week-old baby, who was the focus of an Amber Alert last week.
Officials with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said they searched along Little Eagle Creek for Delano Wilson, who was reported missing in late August. However, officials did not find anything related to the case.
Police said the search at Little Eagle Creek is part of their protocol and does not mean there is new information in the case.
Officers spent several hours Monday night searching the infant’s home in the 500 block of Chase Street.
Wilson has been missing since his father claimed the baby was ripped from his arms and he was knocked unconscious by unknown assailants last week.
Metro police detectives and FBI agents have found no evidence to confirm Willie Wilson’s claim.
Monday night, evidence technicians shot video and removed swatches of carpeting as Wilson and the baby’s mother, Taniasha Perkins, walked out of the home. Perkins and another relative were removed to IMPD headquarters for another round of questioning, as Wilson sat on the curb and buried his head in his hands, refusing to speak to detectives without a lawyer present.
Neighbors who have been interviewed by police and watched the drama play out on their street are perplexed by the lack of urgency at the home of Delano’s family.
“I’d probably been my own little detective. I’d be crying and screaming and hollering and trying to find out any little detail I could. I’d be raising hell literally,” said Christina Richey, a mother of two girls who watched Wilson emerge from an alley after he claimed he was beaten and his baby kidnapped last Wednesday. “Me, as a mom, I would be beating on every door looking, being as nosy as I could without actually breaking the law. It’s tough because people grieve different but me personally, I would’ve been raising hell trying to get answers what happened to my child.”
The few fliers with information about Delano posted on light poles have been taken down. A purple stuffed animal against a fence in front of the family’s home has been removed. A “Baby on Board” yellow triangle in the rear window of the family car is missing. A minimal family and friends search Sunday has not been replicated and there is no search command post on Chase Street.
Twenty-four hours after the reported kidnapping, Richey told FOX59 News that she saw a blue Ford Taurus, as claimed by Wilson, leave the alley and another red pick-up truck, that a woman said belonged to a local bar owner, moments before the empty-handed father appeared and called police.
Richey doesn’t understand how the drivers of two vehicles in a busy alley in a neighborhood constantly traversed by traffic failed to notice a man just seconds and feet away being attacked and his child taken at the noon hour outside a bar with patio seating in its parking lot.
“You see quite a lot of traffic. You got the bar and people exit out of the bar through the alley and then you got people who actually live here going up and down the alleys.
“I mean, you got people coming and going to the scrapyard and you got people going to this business you know there’s a lot of people around. It’s not a quiet neighborhood. There’s a lot of traffic goes through here.”
IFD divers also searched a body of water southwest of the neighborhood Tuesday. Previous searches with bloodhounds failed to turn up any trace of the missing boy.
