Search efforts don’t locate boy’s body in river
MIDDLETOWN — A search of the Ohio River on Wednesday involving seven area law enforcement agencies did not locate the body of a 6-yearold Middletown boy whose mother is accused of killing him.
Rain and high winds halted search and recovery efforts Thursday, but teams will monitor river conditions and will resume their search for James Hutchinson as soon as it is safe to do so, said Preble County Sheriff Mike Simpson. His department is leading the river search.
Butler County Prosecutor Michael Gmoser was in Lawrenceburg, Ind., on Wednesday while recovery teams worked all day to recover the bodies of Hutchinson and Nylo Lattimore, a 3-year-old Cincinnati boy who reportedly was thrown alive on Dec. 6 into the Ohio River by a man also accused of killing his mother.
Gmoser said sonar and a cadaver dog alerted investigators to an area of the river where it was believed a body had been found. It is not known whether the body is either child.
Simpson and Gmoser declined to elaborate on what was found in Thursday’s search that prompted the prosecutor’s statement during the morning that “we have a high degree of probability that a body has been located.”
Gmoser said it was a “promising target of interest,” but there was no recovery.
“When we have exhausted everything up here, we will look to the professional dive people based on their experience with the river to tell us if there is anyplace else we need to be focusing resources on, and we will move to that if they indicate a location,” Simpson said Thursday.
The 6-year-old Middletown boy was allegedly run over and killed Feb. 26 by his mother, Brittany Gosney, at
Rush Run Wild Life Area in Preble County as he clung to her minivan when she attempted to abandon him and his two siblings.
Police said Gosney confessed to her son’s death and said she and her boyfriend, James Hamilton, took the boy’s body on Feb. 28 to Lawrenceburg and threw him in the river.
Gosney, 29, and Hamilton, 42, were indicted this month by a Butler County grand jury on 31 combined charges alleging crimes against all three children, including murder, involuntary manslaughter, gross abuse of a corpse and endangering children for Gosney and kidnapping, gross abuse of a corpse, kidnapping and endangering children for Hamilton.