The parent of a missing boy found dead in the Mississippi River over the weekend is now the “prime suspect” in his suspicious disappearance and death.
Minnesota police say the body of 10-year-old Barway Collins was discovered by a Boy Scout troop a few feet from the riverbank in an area where his father was known to have visited at the time the child vanished.
Collins, a 2011 émigré from Liberia, had been missing for about a month. According to investigators, the last person to see him was Pierre Collins, his biological father.
Based on a preliminary autopsy and the medical examiner’s observations, the victim’s alleged drowning is being investigated now “as a homicide,” although the official cause and manner of death are still pending.
Authorities also have "electronic evidence” showing Barway Collins returning from school on March 18, 2015, but being intercepted in his front yard by someone off-camera that he evidently knew well.
The fourth-grader is then seen walking toward an adjacent parking lot -- the last anyone saw him alive.
Suspicion fell almost immediately on the boy’s family and, as a result, his father and stepmother, Yamah Collins, became publicly defensive throughout the search for their missing child.
In one interview with the Star Tribune, Pierre Collins said, "I've been working with the police just to bring my son home. I will do whatever they want just so Barway can come home. I have nothing to do with Barway's missing."
An immigrant himself, prime suspect Collins has not been arrested and charged yet, but officials seized his passport yesterday so he cannot leave the country.
