The body of a missing 5-year-old boy has been found in a Milwaukee dumpster — with a 15-year-old boy among two people of interest busted in the homicide investigation, according to reports.
Prince McCree was reported missing Wednesday afternoon after his family said the youngster’s dad woke from a nap to find him gone, WDJT said.
Police found his body around 10 a.m. Thursday inside a trash container behind a bar about a mile from the boy’s home.
Prince’s death was being investigated as a homicide. The cause of death is still pending.
A 27-year-old man and a 15-year-old boy have been taken into custody are “persons of interest” in the case, officials said.
Neither has been identified.
However, state Sen. LaTonya Johnson, who lives across the street from Prince’s family, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the two people arrested lived in the same multi-unit home as the dead boy.
A family fundraiser also claimed a mentally ill man who lived in the building was “responsible for this senseless act,” the paper said.
Alderman Michael Murphy, who represents the neighborhood where the boy’s family lives, said he was “shocked.”
“It’s a terrible tragedy for the whole community to see another child so senselessly lose their life and then to be discarded in the manner in which they found the child,” he said.
One of the dead boy’s cousins, Marie Stillo, described him as “just the sweetest little boy.”
“He loved his sister and brother very much, he loved school and learning, he loved everything superheroes, and when he was very little, he loved Baby Shark,” Stillo told the Journal Sentinel.
“We are very sad at what happened, and it wasn’t fair, but now we are just trying to deal with it and put him to rest and help my cousin as much as she can.”