[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]
An Ohio mother reported her child missing to the police before ultimately confessing the young boy had been killed after she allegedly tried to abandon him at a park.
Middletown Police issued an alert on Sunday morning looking for James Hutchinson, whose mother Brittany Gosney (pictured above) reported him missing. The alert described the boy as three feet tall, weighing 42 lbs, last seen wearing a red shirt with blue and red Batman pajama pants, and garnered a huge response as organized search teams began checking the area.
But authorities canceled the search less than 24 hours later after the mother allegedly confessed that the boy had been accidentally killed and that she dumped his body in a local river. An update read:
“Sadly, upon further questioning of Brittany Gosney and her boyfriend, James Hamilton, they now say that James was killed in Preble County a few days ago. The child’s body was brought back to Middletown, where they live, and later put into the Ohio River.”
According to court docs, Gosney told police she took the boy to Rush Run Park where she planned on abandoning him. But as she drove away, James allegedly tried to get back in the car, and tragically got dragged behind it.
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The mother told investigators she sped off, but returned to the park 30 or 40 minutes later, where she found her son lying in the parking lot with a head injury. Thinking he was dead, she took the corpse back to her house and hid it in an upstairs bedroom.
When her other children fell asleep, she and her boyfriend drove over an hour with the corpse to a bridge looking over the Ohio river and dumped it into the body of water. Police added in the update:
“We will be working with trained searchers in an attempt to recover James’s body. The river is very high and treacherous, so we will not be disclosing the exact location in hopes of avoiding another tragic incident.”
Chief of Police David Birk said the mother was “not showing much remorse” for her actions and had not given detectives a motive, saying at a press conference:
“She’s not showing much remorse at this time, but she has confessed… No six year old deserves this.”
He added that the original missing child report had “red flags all over,” with the mother and boyfriend’s stories contradicting each other.
Gosney is facing charges of murder, abuse of a corpse, and tampering with evidence. Hamilton is charged with abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence. The two other children that lived with her have been removed from the home.
[Image via Middletown Police Department]
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