Dozens of volunteers answered the Las Vegas mother’s frantic call to find her 2-year-old son last Friday. The little boy was missing and was considered possibly kidnapped at the time. Just a few days later the police targeted her boyfriend as the main suspect, arrested and charged him with first degree murder.
It was only last Friday that the boyfriend stood next to the desperate mom while she was speaking to KVVU-TV about the disappearance of her son, Amari Nicholson. At that time the little boy had been gone for more than 2 days.
“Panic mode, freaking out, crying, screaming, just, my baby's gone!”, the terrified mother described how she felt.
How did it all happen?
Tayler Nicholson, the baby’s mother, had been visiting her mother to look after her after a dog attack when she was notified her son was missing.
The boy had been left in the care of her boyfriend staying at a nearby hotel close to the strip in Las Vegas. She said her boyfriend, Terrell Rhodes, looked on the baby as his stepson.
Terrell Rhodes declared for KVVU that a woman had knocked on the door at 6:00 a.m., saying she was the baby’s aunt and had come to take him.
“It was a woman saying that she was her baby daddy's sister. And she said she was there to pick up my stepson,” Rhodes said.
He also reportedly said that while he was trying to call the mother and ask if he should give the child to the unknown woman, she ran off with the baby.
“This whole story sounds confusing, it sounds like we're lying, it sounds like, it's a whole, just a big confusion”, the mother declared at the time, while asking people to share what happened on social media in the hope her son would be found soon.
What happened next?
A week later, police investigation pointed to Rhodes. He was taken into custody and arrested for first degree murder with no bail.
According to the officials, Rhodes allegedly confessed to killing the boy, saying that the child had urinated several times on his clothing and that he hit him as punishment with a closed fist for 3 or 4 times.
“At some point, Amari turned blue and purple in the face and stopped breathing,” the police report states.
According to the officers, Rhodes also reacted suspiciously when they discovered blood on a bedroom wall and soiled children’s clothes.
The little boy’s remains were found by the police only a few yards from the hotel. He was beaten to death and then thrown in a dumpster.
Rhodes reportedly tried to fight the officers arresting him and grabbed one of their guns.
“While the arrest was taking place, Terrell Rhodes chose to fight with police officers, and during the course of that fight was briefly able to retrieve an officer's firearm,” said Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Lt. Richard Meyers.