Officers searching Sumter, Richland landfills for missing 5-year-old girl's body

Sumter police officers spent overnight Monday and Tuesday morning sifting through 230 tons of garbage in hopes of finding the body of a 5-year-old girl.

Information given to investigators with the Sumter Police Department by Daunte Maurice Johnson, who has been charged in the death of 29-year-old Sharee Bradley, led officers to both the Sumter County and Richland County landfills after he told them he killed the woman and her daughter, Nevaeh Lashy Adams, in the woman’s home in the Lantana Apartments off Carolina Avenue on Monday afternoon. The 28-year-old said he disposed of the child’s body in a Dumpster at the apartment complex, which is owned by the City of Sumter.

“It’s a sad day for our community,” Sumter Police Chief Russell Roark said at a news conference with media Tuesday evening after community and family members held a vigil in honor of the slain.

There were nine trucks scheduled for transfer to a Richland County station last night, with each truck holding 2.3 tons. The search began in the Sumter County landfill Monday night with the Richland County landfill being inspected as those nine trucks were offloaded beginning at 3:30 a.m. Tuesday.

An initial call came into 911 on Monday about 6:10 p.m. A family member had found the mother dead and her three children not in sight, Roark said.

They located Bradley’s 3-year-old and 13-year-old son but could not find the girl. They located her father, who lives just outside city limits, but she wasn’t with him, either.

Roark said officers identified a suspect within 10 minutes based on information from the community and initiated an alert to the S.C. Law Enforcement Division to activate an Amber Alert, which is a federal program where broadcasters and law enforcement agencies voluntarily work together to disseminate widespread information about an abducted child in immediate existential danger.

Once Johnson said he killed both mother and daughter, Roark said, officers ruled out abduction, meaning there could be no Amber Alert, which social media voices cried out for.

Johnson, who was wanted on a homicide charge in Missouri and whose criminal history includes domestic violence, was spotted Monday in the parking lot of the apartments where officers think both mother and daughter were killed, Roark said. He ran and was apprehended inside a home he ducked into – he did not know the homeowners – on Susie Rembert Road across the street from Lantana.

An initial investigation by the Sumter County Coroner’s Office determined the mother had been dead for several hours before she was found, Roark said.

He said the case continues to remain an open investigation and that officers – the same ones who had been working on the case since Monday – will continue to search the landfills. He said they have been receiving assistance from the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office, Richland County Sheriff’s Office and Sumter’s sanitation department.

The case now moves into a forensic investigation, he said. While all leads will be investigated and Roark said information from the community remains welcomed and encouraged, officers are going off the assumption the girl is dead.

“We keep the hope that perhaps she is still alive,” he said.

He said the department has been using and will continue to use cadaver dogs in the search.

A motive and manner of killing have not yet been revealed for public knowledge, but Roark said nothing in the case indicates there is a second suspect.

“It’s a tragedy for the community. It’s a tragedy for our whole family,” Roark said, whose officers are in the middle of planning the department’s annual back-to-school bash a mile and a half away for students next week ahead of school resuming. “It cuts to the core of who we are as a community.”