Missouri man accused of suffocating girl, 3, to appear in court
August 16, 2011 -- Updated 0957 GMT (1757 HKT)
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Shawn Morgan is charged with first-degree murder
- The girl was last seen riding her bicycle with her brother
- Affidavit: Morgan tells police he suffocated the girl with a plastic trash bag
- A neighbor says, "I would have never dreamed this in a million years"
(CNN) -- A 43-year-old Missouri man -- who told police he suffocated his 3-year-old neighbor with a plastic bag, then stuffed her body in the same bag and tossed her from a highway -- will be arraigned Tuesday.
Shawn Morgan of Senath has been charged with first-degree murder in the death.
The girl, Breeann Rodriguez, was last seen on August 6, riding her pink bicycle with her brother outside their home in Senath.
While authorities have found her bike, authorities continue to search for her body, Dunklin County Prosecuting Attorney Stephen Sokoloff said.
Sokoloff added -- and the Dunklin County court clerk's office confirmed -- that Morgan does not yet have an attorney. His legal representation could be settled when he is arraigned in a Kennett, Missouri, court at 9 a.m. Tuesday, the prosecuting attorney said. Please note that we may have statements for analysis after Morgan has an attorney. Thus far, police are apparently basing their information on Morgan, but have not found Breeann's remains, but did find the bike where Morgan claimed to have dumped it. From the media reports (from police) no motive for suffocation has been made, nor any information about whether or not she was sexually assaulted.
According to a probable cause affidavit dated Saturday, police interviewed Morgan on Friday at the police department in Kennett, a larger community about 10 miles northeast of Senath.
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The suspect said that he spotted the girl standing on a ladder by the pool in his backyard, in Breeann's neighborhood. He told police that he grabbed the girl and carried her inside his house.
There, according to the affidavit, the man "suffocated the girl with a white plastic trash bag, by holding it over her face and mouth.
"Morgan states that he felt like it took an hour for the girl to die," the document adds.
It says Morgan told police he put the girl's body into the same trash bag, and then drove to Missouri's Highway 164 and got rid of the body by throwing it over a railing into a floodway ditch.
After returning home, Morgan said, he then dismantled the girl's bike and dumped it into another, related waterway, the document says.
A bicycle was recovered there and identified by Edgar Rodriguez as belonging to Breeann, his daughter. Police said Thursday that they had found two training wheels similar to those on the girl's bike.
In addition to murder, Sokoloff said in a statement Saturday that Morgan is charged with armed criminal action and tampering with physical evidence.
The suspect, who Sokoloff said had three children of his own, is being held at the Dunklin County Justice Center.
Meanwhile, the approximately 1,800 residents of Senath -- a city in southeast Missouri's "boot heel," about 90 miles north of Memphis, Tennessee -- are trying to come to grips with what happened.
Sharon Haddock, who raised two children on the same street as both the victim and her alleged killer, said Monday that she knew Morgan as "a little boy" and knew some of his family members as "very nice people."
"It's just beyond belief that anybody ... could have done this, but now anybody on your street," she told HLN's Vinnie Politan.
"You think you know your neighbors, but you don't know them as well as you think you do. I would have never dreamed this in a million years."
Another neighbor, Estelle Floyd, said she had lived 89 of her 90 years always feeling safe. But that sense of security has been shaken -- and she's still trying to make sense of what happened.
"All these neighbors ... they'd do anything for anybody at any time," Floyd told HLN. "This was such a shock ... It has touched the hearts of everybody in this town."
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