BATON ROUGE, La. — The bodies of a mother and her young son were found separately in Louisiana, and the woman’s boyfriend was arrested in connection with the deaths, police said.
Kaylen Johnson, 24, and Kaden Johnson, 2, were last seen March 5, and their bodies were found Monday in different locations in Baton Rouge, news outlets reported.
Officers found Johnson’s car without its license plate after she and her son went missing, “and from there, it raised an eyebrow,” Sgt. L’Jean McKneely told WAFB-TV. Police made contact with her boyfriend, Brynnen Murphy, who refused to give information and then disappeared.
The 20-year-old turned himself in on Monday and he was booked into the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison on two counts of first-degree murder. It wasn’t clear if he had an attorney who could comment on his behalf.
Murphy isn’t the father of the child he’s accused of killing, McKneely told The Advocate. The police spokesman added that the mother and son had been dead for at least a week based on the condition of their bodies.
Sources tell the newspaper that Murphy allegedly put Kaylen Johnson's body in a garbage bag before dumping it in a drainage ditch and then threw a handgun he used to kill her in a nearby wooded area.
The Advocate reports Murphy then allegedly drove the 2-year-old to a bridge over a bayou and thew the child over the ledge. He reportedly told police that he could still hear the child crying after he threw him, but continued to drive away. The East Baton Rouge Coroner's Office told the newspaper that the child's cause of death is suspected to be hypothermia.
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