Menifee Missing Boy: ‘Visions’ Led To Remains, Half-Brother Charged With Murder
A Menifee missing boy’s remains were located by volunteer Pam Ragland from Orange County, California. The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department revealed on Friday that the tip about where the child’s body could be found came from 50-year-old Ragland, who said that she saw the location in visions.
Terry Dewayne Smith, 11, was last seen alive on Saturday night. That’s when his mother Shawna Smith said that she left him with her 16-year-old son, Terry’s half-brother, to babysit while she went out to dinner.
On Sunday morning she realized that Terry wasn’t at home. The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, other rescue agencies, and up to 1,000 volunteers eventually came in to help find the missing boy who was described as suffering from autism and was believed to have wandered off in harsh temperatures that topped over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
According to a KTLA report, Pam Ragland had no connection to the Menifee missing boy case other than a friend calling and asking her to use her intuition. Soon thereafter, she had the vision and called the Riverside County tipline.
She said that investigators asked her to come to the command center. When she did, an off-duty firefighter drove her around until they found the spot she’d seen in the vision.
In the Los Angeles Times account of the events, Riverside County Sheriff’s Department Lisa McConnell said that they received a call at about 1 AM on Wednesday morning informing them that Ragland had found Terry Smith’s body.
In this more graphic account of the find, when Ragland recognized the scene of the vision, she also smelled the body — and then discovered “a blackened, bloated head was sticking up about 6 or 8 inches. Half of the nose and an eye were missing.”
His 16-year-old half-brother, then described only as a male juvenile relative, was arrested on Wednesday. On Friday, he was charged with murder by the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office, according to KESQ and other media sources.
The next hearing is scheduled for July 15. It hasn’t yet been decided whether or not the 16-year-old will be tried as an adult for the murder of Menifee missing boy Terry Smith.
[Terry Smith memorial by Find Terry Smith via Facebook]
