Young Boy Found Dead Inside Ft Wayne Home

It started as a missing persons case and ended with a child's death.

“It's a shock that that was happening right there” said Theresa Mason lives across from a halfway house on Wabash Avenue in Fort Wayne. It's where 31-year-old Latisha Lawson and her 10-year-old daughter have been living for about the past three weeks.

Family members say it's been a few months since they've seen Lawson or her daughter. They got worried and called police yesterday. They also said that Lawson has a 3-year-old son whom they haven't seen in nearly a year.

Lawson told neighbors that she had a daughter, but never mentioned a son.

Neighbors say they never saw a little boy.

"She only said she had a little girl” says Mason.

Police found Lawson and her daughter early this morning. When asked where her son was she said he was with God. Lawson told police that she killed her son, Jezaih, around Thanksgiving last year. She said that she couldn't take his temper tantrums. Reports say she gave him olive oil and vinegar until he stopped breathing. She then wrapped him in a blanket and put him in the closet. The document says she's been toting around his body ever since. Police found a child's body today inside the halfway house.

"I got four kids and three grandkids . I don't want nobody to think

that we just live around here and nobody pays attention to them, but I did not know about her son” Mason says.

Lawson's Myspace page says she has two kids, a daughter and a son. She writes "they are both my world and the reason why I fight to make it in this crazy world."

The page was last updated in April 2009.

FOX Fort Wayne also spoke to Elisha Harris, the owner of the halfway house. Harris is a pastor at a Fort Wayne church. He says Lawson came to the church a few weeks ago. She said she was homeless and needed a temporary place to stay. Lawson told Harris' wife that she used to have two kids, but gave one of them up for adoption.

Latisha Lawson faces preliminary charges of child neglect.

            There are still many questions left unanswered, like ‘why didn't relatives notify police sooner? why didn't anyone ask where the little boy was? where did Latisha Lawson live before she entered the halfway house?'

FOX Fort Wayne did discover a partial answer to that last question. Court documents showed she was living in an apartment on Reed Road in Fort Wayne back in February of this year. An autopsy on the boy is scheduled for tomorrow.

Stay Tuned to FOX Fort Wayne News for the latest.