Ap Source: Funding Dispute Will Delay 9/11 Museum

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Police on Monday arrested the caretaker of a missing 5-year-old Arizona girl on child abuse charges "directly related" towards the girl, and said they don't believe they'll discover the child alive.

Inside a news conference that offered one of the most detail yet about what investigators think happened to Jhessye Shockley, Glendale police said the girl's mother, Jerice Hunter, was now the investigation's "No. 1 focus."

Hunter was booked Monday in the Maricopa City jail. A sheriff's spokesman said Hunter was unable to speak to reporters because she'd not yet been assigned a housing unit. She was scheduled to be with her first court appearance Monday night.

Hunter previously told The Associated Press she'd not do with Jhessye's disappearance and was highly critical of the department's investigation.

Glendale police Sgt. Brent Coombs said at the news conference that new information previously day or two led police to serve another search warrant on Hunter's Glendale apartment and arrest her Monday. He wouldn't elaborate.

Next he said Hunter has not cooperated with investigators who've been attempting ...
... to build a lie-detector test along with her.

Coombs added the reward offered for information leading to Jhessye may be raised to $25,000.

"I'd prefer to allow it to be very clear that this is simply by no means the finish to the investigation," Coombs said. "Our investigators will work diligently to locate Jhessye. Might a step down that investigative path towards that final conclusion."

Coombs ended good news conference whenever a reporter asked him directly whether investigators believe Hunter killed Jhessye, saying: "I 'm going to must end those questions right this moment."

But Coombs said investigators don't believe Jhessye is alive.

Investigators spent Monday searching Hunter's apartment, where Jhessye was last seen Oct. 11 after Hunter said she sought out for an errand and left the lady within the good care of three older siblings. It absolutely was the 2nd time police searched the property.

State Child Protective Services removed Hunter's other children, including a newborn, through the apartment recently but declined to convey why. Glendale police said that they no part inside the decision to get rid of the children.

Police previously said that they no evidence, suspects or promising leads in the case. In addition they said they interviewed Hunter on several occasions together pointless to suspect her in Jhessye's disappearance.

Hunter received scrutiny throughout the investigation for an October 2005 arrest together with her then-husband, George Shockley, on child abuse charges in California. Hunter pleaded no contest to corporal punishment and served about four years in prison before she was launched on parole in May 2010.

Hunter's oldest child, 14 back then, told police his mother routinely beat the youngsters.

George Shockley can be a convicted sex offender and is also still in the California prison. Hunter has told reporters she didn't know about his past until they were arrested and today is not to do with him.

Hunter's mother, Shirley Johnson, claims her daughter was obviously a changed woman after she got beyond prison and was a good mother.

Johnson didn't return repeated demands comment Monday afternoon.

Hunter was eight months pregnant when Jhessye disappeared. While still pregnant, she demonstrated with the state capitol in Phoenix, saying her daughter's case wasn't having the attention it deserved because she's black.

At the Oct. 24 demonstration, Hunter condemned people in the media for focusing a lot of to be with her past, and said she'd not hide and would gladly submit to a lie-detector test.

"I are already forthcoming with law enforcement from day 1. I allow them to turn my home in a crime scene hours when i reported that I couldn't find my daughter," she said. "They missed anything, however they are holding my children hostage."

She also criticized the Glendale police department's investigation.

"We believe police force just isn't active to locate Jhessye and that they're more active in persecuting me as opposed to learning where she's," Hunter said.

In the days after Jhessye's disappearance, greater than 100 officers and volunteers looked for her in pools, garbage bins and shrubs. They interviewed and searched the homes of registered sex offenders in the area, and stopped at each and every door to spread news concerning the missing girl.

Police also cordoned off a region of your local landfill where garbage from Jhessye's neighborhood could have been taken the afternoon of and day after her disappearance, but have not searched it.