NEWS

Suspect's stories stall search for baby killed in Wyo.

Jacy Marmaduke
jmarmaduke@coloradoan.com

The search for a 13-month-old boy's body at a Weld County landfill is expected to resume Tuesday morning after high winds and a "wild goose chase" led law enforcement to call off the search Monday.

Trucks enter the North Weld Landfill Thursday, October 27, 2016. Law enforcement agencies in Colorado and Wyoming are working on logistics to search the landfill after a deceased Wyoming baby was reportedly dumped in a trash can that might have been taken to the facility.

Logan Hunter Rogers, the 23-year-old Wyoming man arrested in connection to the death, reportedly told Laramie (Wyoming) County Sheriff's Office investigators he dumped 13-month-old Silas Anthony Ojeda of Cheyenne in a trash bin at Laramie County Community College.

Investigators worked with the local sanitation department to determine that the bin's contents had traveled to the North Weld Landfill in Ault, about 9 miles east of Interstate 25.

CRIME:  Dyers child abuse trial: negligent, or ill-equipped?

Agencies from Wyoming and Colorado were preparing to search the landfill Monday morning at sunrise, but Rogers then requested a meeting with an investigator and changed his story, saying he'd buried the boy at a campsite in Albany County, Wyoming, said Capt. Linda Gesell of the Laramie sheriff's office. Rogers later changed his story again, and investigators got a tip that the boy had been buried beneath a trailer in Cheyenne, leading to several fruitless searches.

Preparation time lost during those searches, paired with winds topping 60 miles an hour north of the Wyoming border Monday morning, led the department to postpone the search, Gesell said.

Logan Rogers

The sheriff's department is hauling a front-end motor, a backhoe and multiple trailers carrying equipment for the search. Investigators can't use cadaver dogs in the search because the methane gas from the landfill is strong enough to kill them, Gesell said.

Ojeda had been missing since Saturday, Oct. 22, and the child's grandfather called 911 Wednesday after the boy's mother told him she hadn't seen the child since the weekend.

NEWS:  Cause of Fort Collins' largest oil spill still unknown

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.

Detectives later learned the story about the fishing trip was a lie. The boy had died and was dumped in a trash bin at Laramie County Community College.

Rogers was arrested Thursday night and faces charges of manslaughter and reckless child endangering. His connection to the boy is unclear, but Gesell said he isn't the boy's biological father.

Anyone with information about the case is asked to call the Laramie County Sheriff's Office at 307-633-4800.