3 Year-old Boy Found Dead in Septic Tank

The body of 3 year-old Loic J.M. Rogers was found recently in a septic tank in Kalispell, Montana. Flathead County Sheriff Mike Meehan said that the boy was found less than 10 feet from the house where he was reported missing. He has also stated that an autopsy showed that the boy drowned. The manhole sized lid was closed and investigators do not believe that the boy climbed into the tank and put the lid back on himself. However, they declined to speculate how he was able to get inside.

Authorities said that they initially didn't see anything while looking in the tank during a search effort. The boy's body was found after draining the tank. The boy's father told police that he took Loic to his car outside a friend's home, told the boy to get in and returned to the house to get his sister. The father said that Lioc was gone when he returned after only a minute.

There is an ongoing criminal investigation. Meehan stated that he has not identified a primary suspect or excluded possible suspects. Lioc's parents are separated and involved in a custody dispute. His father, Mark Rogers has kept primary custody of him and his siblings, one 4 year-old brother and a 6 year-old sister.

Meehan's office first got a call about a missing boy two days before the Lioc was found. The father said that he looked for him with friends and neighbors for 20 minutes before calling the police. After numerous volunteers went through streets and talked to neighbors, authorities opened a possible abduction investigation and issued an Amber alert for Lioc.

Within the next 48 hours, it was becoming a national story, Meehan said. Suddenly, the foot search was pulled at the end of that time period. It shifted from a missing child search to a criminal search because nothing turned up in surrounding neighborhoods. The boy's body was found within hours of the criminal search.