Texas Authorities Find Body of Dead Child ‘Likely To Be’ Missing Sherin Mathews

Texas authorities recovered the body of a small child while searching for Sherin Mathews, the three-year-old girl who went missing on Oct. 7 when her parents said they had left her outside at 3 am for not drinking milk.

The body of the child, which is “most likely” Sherin Mathews, according to the police department spokesman Sgt. Kevin Perlich, has not been positively identified by the medical examiner. The cause of the death has not been identified either. The body of the child was found in a culvert beneath a road around 11 am on Oct. 22.

Sherin’s parents stopped cooperating with the authorities on Oct. 12. They had reportedly made her stand next to a tree 100 feet away from the house at 3 am for not drinking milk. The adopted child, they said, was malnourished and had to be fed many times a day. The father, Wesley Mathews, 37, is out of jail on bond after being arrested on charges of child endangerment. He had gone out to check for Sherin 15 minutes later and found her gone, he said. However, he waited five hours before calling the police.

During the investigation police took a number of items, including a vacuum cleaner, trash bags, hair fibers, cell phones and laptops, from Mathews’ home.

“While he was waiting he did a little laundry and hoped that the light would come around and he could do a better check,” said Perlich, according to Fox News. “He elected to call the police shortly after 8 o’clock.”

The father also said that the lane across from the place where Sherin was forced to stand had been known to have coyotes. The SUV owned by the family had reportedly gone out between 4 and 5 am on Oct. 7.

The couple is using different attorneys. The mother, Sini, said she was asleep when the incident took place. The couple have another daughter, who is 4 years old. She is in the custody of a family friend.

Child Protective Services have previous experience dealing with the family but did not reveal the details. Sherin reportedly had disabilities, which made it hard for her to communicate. She was adopted in June 2016.