Boy, 15, held in case of missing grandmother

Jacksonville youth caught trying to cross into Canada.

Hours after a body believed to be that of a 53-year-old grandmother was found in a shallow grave in a Neptune Beach backyard near Jacksonville, police have detained a suspect: her grandson.

The Jacksonville Sheriff ’s Office tweeted just after 11 p.m. Friday that it had captured Logan Mott, 15, at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection office in the Buffalo, New York, area as he tried to enter Canada.

Jacksonville detectives are calling Logan a person of interest in the presumed death of 53-year-old Kristina French. French was caring for her grandson while his father, Eric Mott, was on vacation with his girlfriend, the Florida Times Union reported. The couple started to worry when Logan and his grandmother failed to pick them up from the airport.

When the senior Mott, a Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office corrections officer, finally arrived at his home, he found no one there and his house ransacked. Also gone: weapons from his gun safe. French’s home was also found ransacked and her weapons and 2015 Dodge Dart were missing.

A surveillance camera at a gas station in south-central Pennsylvania recorded an image of Logan and the car on Thanksgiving Day at 1:15 p.m. Ron Lendvay, a director of investigations and homeland security for the Jacksonville Sheriff ’s Office, told the Florida Times Union.

On Thanksgiving morning, before he was found, the boy’s mother, Carrie Campbell-Mott, who lives in Missouri, had posted pleas for the safe return of her son and his grandmother on her Facebook page.

Following his capture Friday night, she gave the following statement to the ABC television show “Good Morning America”: “We are relieved he is safe and in custody and we just ask for everyone to give us time to sort out what happened. That no matter what, Logan is our child and we love him and are standing by him to help in any way. We want to find out what happened to Kristina and we need time for that to happen.”

Eric Mott’s updated Facebook cover photo, posted Thursday and still up, pictures his son and his mother, French, with the word “Missing” in red letters.