Yesterday evening, hours after her mother had called the police and reported her missing, a two-year-old girl was found dead in a septic tank in a nearby backyard. According to Ocean County Prosecutor Marlene Ford, "The search teams found a small approximately 3 foot wide hole in the yard, apparently to a septic tank, and called in the Lakewood Township Public Works Department to pump out the water in the tank. At approximately 7:30 PM, the water level had been dropped and police and emergency personnel unfortunately made visual observation of the body of a child in that tank."
The toddler had been playing with siblings outside their Lakewood home but then she disappeared. At 4:49 p.m., the girl's mother called police and, after a search involving the county police canine unit and a state helicopter, the open septic tank was found. Michael Stewart of the Department of Public Works said, "It's hard to say" why the tank was open "because it's a vacant house. Nobody lives there... It was like it was uncovered, a square, about a foot and a half to two foot. It was uncovered, and it was full of straight human sewage."
