Arrest made in landfill search for baby

Jason Pohl and Alicia Stice, Coloradoan
Logan Rogers

A 23-year-old Wyoming man has been arrested in connection to the death of a 13-month-old baby investigators say was dumped in a trash bin and transported to a Colorado landfill. 

Logan Hunter Rogers was arrested Thursday night and faces charges of manslaughter and reckless child endangering, the Laramie (Wyoming) County Sheriff's Office announced Friday morning. Investigators served a search warrant of a Cheyenne home Thursday night and collected "some biological evidence" from the residence.

Laramie County Sheriff's Department Capt. Linda Gesell said the department could not yet release a cause of death for the baby, though she did say Rogers was not the child's biological father. 

Rogers took investigators to the dumpster where he said he dumped the baby's body, and investigators worked with the sanitation department to learn that the contents of that dumpster were taken to an Ault, Colo., landfill on Wednesday.

CRIMEMom charged in fatal abuse case arrested — again

Law enforcement agencies from Wyoming and Colorado responded on Thursday to the North Weld Landfill, about 9 miles east of Interstate 25 along Colorado Highway 14. The agencies are preparing to begin a search of the landfill Monday morning at sunrise. Gesell said it was taking time to coordinate between the different agencies and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. 

Laramie County investigators told the Coloradoan they were ironing out logistics to search for the baby. Investigators cannot use cadaver dogs in the search because the methane gas from the landfill is strong enough to kill them, Gesell said. 

"We will equip people with proper safety equipment and they will be taking buckets of refuse out one at a time and searching that," Gesell said. Five Laramie investigators are working the case. 

Gesell said the trucks coming in from Cheyenne dumped the refuse in a new area of the landfill, and the person who was working at the time was able to remember where, narrowing down the search area for investigators. 

The boy had been missing since Saturday, and the child's grandfather called 911 Wednesday after the boy's mother told him that she had not seen the child since the weekend. The woman's boyfriend reportedly gave the child to a man named "Santiago" who was to take him on a fishing trip, the sheriff's office said. Neither the woman nor her boyfriend knew "Santiago's" last name or where he lived.

MORE NEWS:  High-profile child abuse trial begins

Detectives later learned the story about the fishing trip was a lie and the boy had died and was dumped in a trash bin at Laramie County Community College. That bin was then collected, and its contents were taken to the Colorado landfill.

The child's name has not been released.

Investigators had not interviewed the mother as of Friday morning but were treating her as a witness, Gesell said. 

Reporter Jason Pohl covers breaking news for the Coloradoan. Follow him on Twitter: @pohl_jason. 

150 barrels of oil spill in Fort Collins