A man seems to have murdered his 2-year-old son and later himself this past Thursday.
Dawson’s mother, Sean's wife, reported the pair missing around 10:30 p.m. on Thursday. She recounted Sean Thomson picking Dawson up from her parents’ home near Boonsboro at around 8:30 p.m. that evening; Sean then reportedly told Dawson's grandparents that he and the child were to go hiking.
She discovered her husband’s car in the entrance parking lot at the Boonsboro Appalachian Trail, subsequently calling the authorities to report the two missing. She also revealed to police that Sean Thomson had been "despondent lately".
The police are currently treating the deaths as a murder-suicide.
Shortly after 3 a.m. today, the body of the child was found in a ravine off the trail, more than a mile north of where the car was located,” a news release said.
Sean Thomson’s corpse was discovered less than an hour soon after. The vicinity of both bodies to one another was not instantly obvious.
The police said a knife was recovered from the scene, which they described as “a rugged location accessible only on foot.” Baltimore's chief medical examiner is currently performing autopsies on the bodies.