Sheriff says boy left hospital and is expected to fully recover
A 25-year-old South Carolina man has been charged with attempted murder after his 11-month-old son was found alive in a buried dog crate roughly 24 hours after the boy disappeared, authorities said. Sheriff Jay Koon said the child, Koah Sharp, was released from a hospital Tuesday night and is expected to make a full recovery.
Dozens of first responders scoured the countryside looking for the boy, who has reddish blond hair. After a full day of searching, authorities found freshly disturbed soil and heard cries from below ground, the sheriff said. “As you can imagine, the race was on. Everyone was trying to get him out,” Koon said.
Koon said the boy likely survived because of cool temperatures and an air pocket created by a towel that was wrapped around the crate below ground. Koah was soon freed and was “clinging to life,” the sheriff told reporters.
John Comer, the boy’s grandfather, told the Associated Press on Wednesday night about the rescue a day earlier in the woods on his neighbor’s property. Rescuers found Koah crying and covered in dirt, but soon after the infant stopped crying, Comer said. The infant was then put on the back of a truck and sat up, Comer said. “I became ecstatic, my hands straight in the air. I’m looking in the sky, jumping up and down, praising God,” Comer said. “And at the same time I hit my knees and I’m just crying.”
Michael Comer has been in custody since Monday, when Koah disappeared. He was arrested while hiding in a building in Batesburg-Leesville. It was not immediately known whether he has a lawyer who could respond to the charges, and a court hearing was planned for Thursday.
Comer was sentenced to probation in October after pleading guilty to domestic violence and aggravated breach-of-peace charges related to an arrest in July, according to Lexington County online court records. Prosecutors dropped a gun charge as part of the plea deal, and he also received credit for spending more than two months in jail.
Authorities said Koah had been in the care of Michael Comer’s mother. She left the boy in her son’s care to run an errand while another caregiver was on the way, the sheriff said. “By the time the caregiver got there, Michael was gone, and Koah was gone with him,” Koon said. Surveillance video from several businesses in the area showed Comer without the baby on Monday afternoon, the sheriff said.
John Comer said he opened his home to his son and grandson on Monday after Michael Comer said they needed a place to stay. He said he feels he was taken advantage of by his son, but he is also thankful he agreed, because the boy may not have been found in time if they had gone somewhere else. “It just seems like he already had this planned out, and he knew what he was doing,” Comer said. “And he took the opportunity to do what he did. And if it hadn’t have been here, I don’t think anybody would have known where he would have went, and this would be a completely different story.”
Authorities have not revealed anything about Michael Comer’s motive. The boy’s parents “have had some situations,” the sheriff said. “Children,” he said, “sometimes get caught in the middle.”
Amber Hammond, Koah’s great-aunt, watched as the boy was freed from the crate. “We’re better now that we know that Koah is safe,” Hammond told the Associated Press. She said her nephew had talked about taking the baby to New York because “he didn’t want to be in the same state as the mom.” When Koah vanished, Hammond said, she and others assumed Comer had given the boy to someone. “We had no idea something like this would happen at all,” she said.
At nearly a year old, Koah has been trying to stand on his own and loves watching Mickey Mouse cartoons, said Hammond, who cared for him last weekend. John Comer said he had never heard his grandson cry before the boy was found underground. “He’s always been happy,” he said. “The kid’s always got a smile on his face.”