Local law enforcement officers who found a missing autistic boy, figured out what happened to a woman slain when she tried to leave a cult and shut down an international child pornography ring have been honored by a national organization.
JaShawn Logan, a District police officer; Neil O’Callaghan, a D.C.-based special agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations; and David Hines, a sheriff colonel in Hanover County, Va., were among the 13 investigators nationwide recognized at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s annual awards ceremony.
Logan and five North Carolina officers were recognized for investigating a polygamous cult accused of killing a District woman and a North Carolina boy. Logan began looking into the case when the family of 28-year-old Antoinetta McKoy reported her missing in December 2010.
“The bells rang. The flags came up,” Logan said in a video about the case played during the ceremony. Two people connected to the home where cult members lived were missing, she said, and “no one had any concrete explanation.”
The two bodies were buried in a Durham, N.C., backyard, and seven people have been charged in their deaths.
O’Callaghan was honored for helping bring down an international child pornography trafficking group. The 600 members of the group had to prove they were producing pornography and that the children were distressed or being hurt in order to access certain sections of an online forum, O’Callaghan said in his video. Seventy-two people were indicted as a result of the investigation.
Hines was recognized for leading a six-day search in October for 8-year-old Robert Wood Jr., an autistic, nonverbal boy who disappeared while visiting a Civil War battlefield park.
“A lot of this was new to us,” Hines said in the video. “We’re talking about a child who doesn’t know he’s lost.”
Hines organized thousands of volunteers who scoured the park for Robert, who was found safe the day temperatures were slated to drop drastically.
“Sheriff Hines used all the resources he had,” John Walsh of “America’s Most Wanted” said at the ceremony. “I think lots of people thought they weren’t going to find this boy or get him back alive.”
