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Chicago police match dismembered toddler’s DNA to missing 2-year-old

Posted at 2:47 PM, Nov 05, 2015
and last updated 2015-11-05 14:47:34-05

The remains of a toddler found in a Chicago lagoon over the Labor Day weekend match the DNA of a missing 2-year-old boy from Rockford, Illinois, Chicago police said.

Kyrian Knox wasn't reported missing until two weeks after a dismembered body was found in Garfield Park near Chicago's New West Side. It's not clear when the boy was last seen.

The body parts may have been in the lagoon "a week to two weeks" when they were found in early September, the police department's chief of detectives, John Escalante, told reporters at the time. "We don't think much longer."

Still, that may mean Knox had been missing about a month before authorities were informed.

His mother said the boy was staying with a family friend in Rockford while she was moving from Iowa to Chicago.

Many questions remain in the case. Chicago police said they're determined to find the answers.

"It certainly galvanized the CPD to find out how Kyrian was killed and certainly why and how he was dismembered," police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told CNN affiliate WIFR. "I think we owe it to this young child ... we're going to see it through."

The discovery

After a human foot was found over the Labor Day weekend in the Garfield Park lagoon, searchers recovered the head, two hands and another foot.

The lagoon was drained over a number of days, because the water was too cloudy and cluttered for divers.