An 11-Month-Old Vanished With His Father — The Next Day, Searchers Digging in the Woods Heard Crying Under the Dirt

After a full day of searching, the search party found a patch of woods that looked wrong: pine straw and freshly disturbed dirt, about 50 yards in from a house on Parthenon Road in Batesburg-Leesville, South Carolina.

Investigators from the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department, the State Law Enforcement Division and the FBI probed the ground, marked it out and began to dig.

Then, from under the earth, came the sound of a baby crying.

“As they probed it and laid it out and started digging, you could hear little Koah crying,” Sheriff Jay Koon told reporters on Tuesday. “So, as you can imagine, the race was on.”

Eleven-month-old Koah Sharp had been missing since Monday. By the sheriff’s estimate, he had spent roughly 24 hours underground, inside a wire dog crate. The man now accused of putting him there is the person he had been left with: his father.

A Quiet Errand, an Empty House

It started with a babysitting handoff. Koah’s paternal grandmother, Patricia Comer, was caring for him that Monday. According to the sheriff, she left him with her son, 25-year-old Michael Comer, while she ran an errand and another caregiver was on the way.

“By the time the caregiver got there, Michael was gone, and Koah was gone with him,” Koon said.

Patricia Comer gave NBC News her own account: she had gone to work, and around 11 a.m. a friend stopped by to drop off formula. No one answered the door, so the friend called her. “Something just did not feel right,” she said. “I told my boss, ‘I need to leave work.’ Call it mother’s instinct. I don’t know what it was.” She called 911.

Deputies went to the home of Michael Comer’s father on Parthenon Road. Both doors were standing open. Baby belongings were inside. Comer and the child were not.

The Father Was Caught. The Baby Wasn’t With Him.

Surveillance video from several businesses in the area showed Comer on Monday afternoon, the sheriff said — alone. Koah was nowhere in the frame.

That night, deputies found Comer hiding in an outbuilding in Batesburg-Leesville and arrested him on a burglary charge. The baby was not with him, and, according to WSB-TV, he would not tell deputies where his son was.

What followed was a search of nearly 100 officers, firefighters, paramedics and federal agents from about a dozen agencies, including SLED, the FBI and the ATF. The sheriff’s office described the boy they were looking for as a “bright boy with reddish blond hair.” NBC News reported he weighed about 20 pounds and had a pacifier.

Inside the family, nobody imagined the worst. Koah’s great-aunt, Amber Hammond, told The Associated Press that 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, she and others assumed Comer had handed him to someone.

“We had no idea something like this would happen at all,” Hammond said.

Twenty-Four Hours Under the Dirt

On Tuesday, sometime between 1:30 and 2:30 p.m., the dig near the grandfather’s house reached the crate.

It measured about 2 feet by 2 feet, Koon said, and it had been buried shallow. “I think once that crate hit the ground, it was probably about at least a foot from the top of that crate to the top of the ground,” he said.

Koah was inside — and he was screaming.

“God is good,” the sheriff told reporters not long after. “Just a few moments ago, we found little Koah Sharp, 11 months old, buried alive, clinging to life. Crying the most joyful sound you ever heard of a crying baby.” Later he added: “He was screaming at the top of his lungs, which is a good thing in the baby world, I would guess.”

Hammond was there watching as he was freed. “We’re better now that we know that Koah is safe,” she told the AP.

So how does an infant survive a day beneath a foot of soil?

The answer, the sheriff believes, is a towel. One had been wrapped around the crate, and Koon said it most likely created an air pocket that let the boy breathe. The cool November weather probably helped too. “That, by the grace of God, probably provided enough air for him to survive,” Koon said.

Paramedics took Koah straight to the hospital. By Tuesday night, he was already home with relatives, and the sheriff said he is expected to make a full recovery.

The Record Behind the Arrest

By Wednesday, a burglary arrest had grown into a far heavier list. Michael Comer is now charged with attempted murder, unlawful conduct toward a child, custodial interference and burglary, the sheriff’s department said. PEOPLE reported he also faces counts including child neglect, violating his probation and transporting a child to avoid a custody proceeding. He has not entered a plea, and it was not immediately clear whether he has a lawyer. A court hearing was planned for Thursday.

The probation is recent. Lexington County court records show Comer was sentenced in October after pleading guilty to domestic violence and aggravated breach-of-peace charges stemming from a July arrest, the AP reported. Prosecutors dropped a gun charge as part of the deal, and he received credit for more than two months already spent in jail.

Koah’s parents “have had some situations” involving domestic violence charges, Koon said. “Children,” he added, “sometimes get caught in the middle.”

Investigators say they have no specific motive. Koah’s mother, Dezerah Sharp, has full custody, Patricia Comer told NBC News. Speaking to WACH Fox, Patricia said her son had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and manic depression. The station reported that his family believed jealousy may have driven him to take the boy and keep him from his mother. To NBC, she called what he is accused of “pure evil” and said there had been no warning signs.

“A Great Inspiring Story to Tell”

The family is still reeling. A relative started a GoFundMe for Koah’s mother, who is pregnant and has been hospitalized, WACH reported. “Our family is devastated by what happened,” wrote Kelsey Gray, who identified herself as Dezerah Sharp’s sister-in-law.

Hammond, who cared for Koah the weekend before he disappeared, remembers a baby who was trying to stand on his own and already had his favorite shows. “I’d go to feed him, and it had Mickey Mouse on,” she said. “You can’t feed him and have Mickey Mouse on at the same time.”

Sheriff Koon hopes the boy will never carry the memory of those 24 hours.

“A lot of things were going in Koah’s favor, and the good Lord looked down on him in the last 24 hours,” he said, “and hopefully, at 11 months old, he will not remember much of this as he grows older and just to have a great inspiring story to tell.”