The search conducted to look for eight-year-old girl Madyson "Maddy" Middleton of Santa Cruz, Calif., ended with very sad news.
Perhaps, all of Santa Cruz was looking for her, and all of them were saddened when police found her body dumped in a dumpster, dead.
"This is extraordinarily heartbreaking news I'm about to give to you," said Santa Cruz Police Chief, Kevin Vogel, as reported by the Washington Post. "This evening at approximately 7:55 p.m. ... our detectives discovered the body of a young female inside of a dumpster at the complex located behind me."
Her 42-year-old mother, Laura Jordan, told the Santa Cruz Sentinel that prior to her daughter's disappearance, Maddy was waiting for a friend so that they could play. She rode her white razor scooter under her friend's window and was last seen in her scooter near a cluster of metal mailboxes at the base of a red, four-story apartment building at the Tannery Arts Center where they lived.
Then, she disappeared.
"I thought she was in the courtyard. I thought she was in the bathroom, checked the art bar, then I started going to every friend's house," Laura told the Santa Cruz Sentinel. "Maybe she got bored waiting for her play date, maybe she found a another friend. But we had no luck."
According to an Associated Press report, Maddy was a four-foot tall, 50-pound child that has long brown hair. She was wearing a purple dress, black leggings, black flip-flops and a black helmet on the day that she was last seen.
Hours later, a massive search effort began, which involved residents, authorities, search helicopters, search dogs and hundreds of fliers and social media posts. The search was conducted in a very wide area, only to find that Maddy's body was just inside the complex where they lived.
After locating her dead body, authorities arrested a male teen who is suspected of murdering Maddy. "We have arrested and taken into custody a 15-year-old male who was on the property at the time of the discovery," Vogel said in the report.
Vogel further states that they don't believe there are any crime witnesses, but there are some who saw the suspect on the property Sunday.
The FBI did a door-to-door search Monday. Residents said the teen's mother screamed in agony when her son was being taken.
In a report from Yahoo News, according to a resident of the complex and search volunteer Kirby Scudder, Maddy and the unnamed suspect know each other.
"We lost not one kid, but two kids over the weekend, and both parents are in an absolute state of shock," said Scudder, who described the suspect as admired, well-liked and well-rounded.
