Thursday, December 25, 2025
37.0°F

SC authorities to say how missing girl, neighbor were killed

Associated Press | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 5 years, 10 months AGO
by Associated Press
| February 18, 2020 12:05 AM

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Authorities say they plan to reveal how a 6-year-old South Carolina girl was killed after disappearing from her front yard, and how evidence about her disappearance was found in the trash of a deceased neighbor whose body was found soon after the girl’s.

Police in Cayce and the Lexington County Coroner's Office have scheduled a news conference Tuesday afternoon on Faye Marie Swetlik's slaying.

The girl got off the school bus and was last seen playing in her Cayce front yard on Feb. 10. More than 200 officers searched over three days for her, knocking on every door in her neighborhood and checking every vehicle going in and out.

Investigators have said they found a clue about her disappearance in a neighbor's trash can Thursday.

They soon found the girl's body in woods that had been searched previously, and then found the neighbor, 30-year-old Coty Scott Taylor, dead in his home.

Cayce Public Safety officers said the girl's death is being investigated as a homicide. They have not said anything about how Taylor died.

The girl's disappearance shocked Cayce, a town of about 13,000 just west of Columbia. Several prayer vigils were held while she was missing and after her body was found.

A public memorial for Faye will be 7 p.m. Friday at Trinity Baptist Church in Cayce.

ARTICLES BY ASSOCIATED PRESS

August 18, 2021 12:03 a.m.

Hong Kong police arrest 4 from university student union

HONG KONG (AP) — Four members of a Hong Kong university student union were arrested Wednesday for allegedly advocating terrorism by paying tribute to a person who stabbed a police officer and then killed himself, police said.

July 25, 2021 12:09 a.m.

For South Sudan mothers, COVID-19 shook a fragile foundation

JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — Paska Itwari Beda knows hunger all too well. The young mother of five children — all of them under age 10 — sometimes survives on one bowl of porridge a day, and her entire family is lucky to scrape together a single daily meal, even with much of the money Beda makes cleaning offices going toward food. She goes to bed hungry in hopes her children won’t have to work or beg like many others in South Sudan, a country only a decade old and already ripped apart by civil war.

July 24, 2021 12:09 a.m.

For South Sudan mothers, COVID-19 shook a fragile foundation

JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — Paska Itwari Beda knows hunger all too well. The young mother of five children — all of them under age 10 — sometimes survives on one bowl of porridge a day, and her entire family is lucky to scrape together a single daily meal, even with much of the money Beda makes cleaning offices going toward food. She goes to bed hungry in hopes her children won’t have to work or beg like many others in South Sudan, a country only a decade old and already ripped apart by civil war.