The bodies of two young children recovered from waterways in northeastern Oklahoma this week are the two toddlers who went missing from an east Tulsa apartment complex May 22.
Tulsa Police Chief Wendell Franklin announced Friday the medical examiner's office had identified the bodies as 3-year-old Miracle and 2-year-old Tony Crook.
"It's saddening, but it's also, from our perspective, we are elated that we were able to bring closure, and this is closure. It's closure because we were able to actually locate those two and bring them home to their families
Apartment complex security camera footage captured May 22 last showed Miracle and Tony walking hand-in-hand toward Mingo Creek. Earlier in the day, they had been seen in a convenience store with their noncustodial mother, Donisha Willis, then captured by a security camera walking by themselves outside.
Tuesday night, Wagoner County Emergency Management recovered a young girl's body in the Verdigris River near Lock and Dam 17, south of Wagoner, leading Tulsa Police and more than a dozen partner agencies to widen their search.
Wednesday around 5 p.m., search teams recovered the body of a young boy from Bird Creek near 46th Street North.
Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler said he and his staff will spend the weekend reviewing the case to decide whether additional charges need to be filed.
"Cases which involve the possibility of criminal charges related to the death of a child are necessarily emotionally charged. That is natural," Kunzweiler said. "However, it's the duty of the District Attorney's Office to set aside the obvious emotions and to do the job for which we were hired to do. We must look at these cases as we do with all cases, with an eye toward the objective facts."
Willis was arrested May 22 and currently faces two charges of child neglect and one charge of assaulting an officer.
