1:54CENTURIA, WIS. – Through the long hours that thousands of searchers scoured fields and forests in blistering heat for a missing Wisconsin toddler, his body was in the trunk of a locked car that search teams passed by countless times.
On Thursday, Polk County officials were left trying to explain why the exhaustive search focused on acres of surrounding land and expressing regret that investigators hadn't forced open the car's trunk that held the body of 2-year-old Isaiah Theis.
The body was found about 10:15 p.m. Wednesday, a little over 24 hours after the boy disappeared while playing with his 7-year-old brother at the family's home near Centuria, about 60 miles northeast of St. Paul.
The shocking discovery came when the car's owner came to claim his vehicle from Justin Theis, Isaiah's father, who works on cars near the family's home, the Sheriff's Office said.
Sheriff Peter Johnson said searchers had looked into the vehicle and in the area around it several times but hadn't checked its trunk. They had been told that the vehicle had been locked before the boy wandered off and that it was "extremely unlikely that he could have been in it, based on that information," Johnson said.
No word on cause of death
The search was instead focused away from the house.
Searchers had combed fields, forests, a pond and a swamp, because the boy's family said he often wandered into the woods or up and down the road, Chief Deputy Steve Moe told reporters at a news conference.
It was presumed that Isaiah had wandered off once again, and that theory dominated the search process, he said.
