CELINA — A child is dead and a previously missing Clark County man is in custody after a 911 caller found a running truck with an infant in a car seat, the Mercer County Sheriff’s Office reported.
Brian A. Hayslip, 22, of Springfield, was in custody Wednesday at the Mercer County Adult Detention Facility awaiting appropriate charges in the death of his daughter, 3-month-old Lilly Hayslip.
An official with the Clark County Prosecutor’s Office said a murder charge against Hayslip will soon be filed. Hayslip will be extradited back to Clark County, as it was determined the child’s death occurred there.
Hayslip’s case will be presented before a grand jury Tuesday in Clark County. He has not been officially charged with murder, but an official said Wednesday afternoon that the paperwork is “working its way through the court.”
Officials from the Mercer and Clark counties’ sheriff’s and prosecutor’s offices, which are working closely on this case, would not confirm the identity of the deceased child.
However, the Springfield News-Sun reports reported the deceased child is Hayslip’s daughter, 3-month-old Lilly Hayslip. The News-Sun cited an incident report from German Township Police that stated Lilly Hayslip’s mother, Brittany Bruce, called 911 to report her child and Brian Hayslip missing Tuesday afternoon. A neighbor told police he saw Hayslip leave in a Ford truck around 1 p.m. Tuesday.
According to the report, Brian Hayslip was supposed to drop the infant off at her mother’s home, but he never arrived. The reporting officer, Ryan Axle, stated the mother told him there was no argument before the disappearance. However, she told Axle that Hayslip may be suffering from a mental illness.
A report from the Mercer County Sheriff’s Office stated a resident on the 6100 block of Wabash Road in Celina called 911 at 5:17 p.m. Tuesday, reporting he found an infant child in a car seat inside a running truck. The man then called his son, who found an ID for Hayslip inside the truck.
“There’s a pickup truck part-way up our driveway, pulled off in the mud,” the caller told a Mercer County dispatcher. “There’s a little baby in there, and he’s dead in a child seat.”
Deputies responded, along with members of the Celina Fire Department, who declared the infant dead. The infant’s body was in the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office on Wednesday awaiting on autopsy. A cause of death has yet to be released.
Mercer County Coroner Timothy Heinrichs said he would not discuss the cause of death, citing an ongoing investigation.
After ID’ing the alleged suspect, an on-duty K-9 and his handler, Sgt. Kyle Dues of the Coldwater Police Department, tracked and found Hayslip in an open field, next to a wooded area. Hayslip was then arrested on suspicion of murder.
Mercer County Sheriff Jeff Grey would not comment further on the case, since the apparent crime occurred in Clark County.
