Police seek info about boy’s death

PORT ALLEN — Investigators with “very little to go on” are asking for the public’s help in making an arrest in the hit-and-run death of an “unsupervised” 6-year-old autistic boy Friday in West Baton Rouge Parish, a State Police spokesman said Wednesday.

An unknown vehicle struck Kaleb Shavers, 4247 Prescott Court, Baton Rouge, around 9:15 p.m. Friday less than a mile from Mulatto Bend Road, Trooper First Class Jared Sandifer said.

Police reported that the boy had wandered off from a Christmas party he was attending with his parents at a home on North River Road in Port Allen.

“We still have very little to go on,” Sandifer said. “We’re asking that if anybody saw anything unusual — a vehicle with damage on it they might not have seen before or looks like it may have been involved in a hit-and-run — to contact us.”

Investigators believe the child left the party, unnoticed, traveling two miles on foot and trekking through a cane field, to reach U.S. 190/La. 1, where a vehicle heading west struck and killed him, according to reports.

An Erwinville volunteer firefighter discovered the boy’s body around 12:45 a.m. Saturday near Mulatto Bend Road, a connecting street between U.S. 190/La. 1 and North River Road, State Police reported.

Kaleb’s father, Kevin Shavers, has said his son suffered a broken leg and died from a head injury as a result of the hit-and-run incident.

Although State Police have said they didn’t suspect foul play was involved, Shavers previously said he believes someone in a vehicle picked up his son at some point after the boy left the party and then dropped him off where his body was later found.

In a published report, Shavers said his son would never have walked two miles down a highway.

But Sandifer said Wednesday state troopers were still treating the investigation as a hit-and-run incident and that evidence investigators have gathered so far does not support the father’s claims.

“We’ve been out there, we’ve followed the evidence,” Sandifer said. “We deal in facts, not rumors. We feel the boy was unsupervised and walked away from the party.”

Anyone with information about the case is asked to contact Louisiana State Police at [phone] or their local law enforcement agency.

Comments

1) Comment by CitizensArrest - 20/12/2012

Seems like arrests could have been made already. Arrest the parents. Whoever hit this child might have thought it was a raccoon, armadillo, opossum... Who expects a tint child to be walking in the road at 9:30 at night? The responsible parties are the parents. Put them in jail.

2) Comment by Momo - 20/12/2012

sounds like denial is just a river in egypt, its a horrible thing that happened, but sometimes you have to man up and take responibilty, nobody wants to admit that they were at a party having fun and not noticing that there handicapped child was not be supervised, but like the story states he prob did walk all that way, the truth some times hurts