Left inset: Darnell Gray (GoFundMe). Middle inset: Quatavia Givens in court (KRCG). Right inset: Quatavia Givens taking part in the search for Darnell Gray after killing him (KRCG). Background: Quatavia Givens speaking with members of a search crew who were looking for Darnell Gray in Missouri. (KOMO/YouTube).
A Missouri woman has admitted to killing a 4-year-old boy she was babysitting, with reports saying she participated in a six-day search for the child after concocting a story about him disappearing, along with snacks and clothes.
"Looking back knowing that she was the one that hurt this baby, ya know, it just let's you know that this is a master manipulator," said Mary Williams Coley, a Missouri Missing Volunteers member who helped look for Darnell Gray with Quatavia Givens, the babysitter who killed him.
"She could've been on the soap operas because she put on a show," Coley told local CBS affiliate KRCG in October 2019, a year after Gray was killed by Givens and dumped in a wooded area of Jefferson City.
Givens, 33, pleaded guilty on Friday to second-degree murder, child abuse, and abandonment of a corpse for beating and smothering Darnell in October 2018. She was sentenced to life in prison.
Police said Givens reported Darnell missing on the morning of Oct. 25, 2018, and took part in the search for him. Local news footage shows Givens canvassing areas with other volunteers and even giving interviews about his purported disappearance.
Givens claimed Darnell vanished from his father's residence sometime before 7 a.m. after the boy's dad, Kijuanis Gray, asked her to watch him. She said Darnell's backpack, coat, hat, gloves, two juice boxes and some cookies were also missing.
"She stated the child was either abducted from the residence or ran away from the residence," an arrest affidavit obtained by Law&Crime explains.
"She had her story like planned out," volunteer Kathy Mueller told KRCG. "Who counts juice boxes? Who? Who checks their cabinet? When their child or someone their caring for is gone?"
Kijuanis Gray, who is originally from Chicago, reportedly said he left Darnell with Givens at his home in Jefferson City and thought nothing of it.
"I trusted her to watch him," Gray told Chicago ABC affiliate WLS in November 2018. "I wasn't expecting her to do this to him."
Gray said he moved from Chicago to Missouri a few years before Darnell was killed because he "wanted a better life." Gray brought the boy to Missouri just six months before he disappeared, WLS reports. Darnell's mother still lived in Chicago.
"That's my only child that I had," Gray told WLS. "My only child."
A GoFundMe described Darnell's death as coming at the "hand" of Givens, who is identified in the description as a "babysitter." Police say in Givens' arrest affidavit that she was interviewed after his body was eventually found in the woods and she admitted, "I may have hit him wrong," along with hiding his body.
An autopsy showed that Darnell died from blunt force trauma and was smothered.
"This case represents one of the most painful tragedies our community has faced and the loss of an innocent child whose life was taken far too soon," Cole County prosecutor Locke Thompson said at a press conference on Friday while announcing Givens' guilty plea.
According to Thompson, Givens was given a sentence of life in prison plus 15 years, with the possibility of parole after 30 years. Thompson said "there were a few unique circumstances" that severely delayed the case.
"For one thing, it took a significant amount of time for the autopsy report to come back," the prosecutor explained. "It took close to a year, which is highly unusual. So that obviously caused a delay in the case. And then the finding of incompetence to proceed a couple years ago now and then the delay in Ms. Givens getting to the Department of Mental Health. That put the case at a standstill for some time."
Asked about what delayed the autopsy, Thompson said, "There were some studies they wanted to do on the brain to check for neurological damage. That was the reason. They wouldn't send us the complete report until they got those results back."
Thompson said that Givens' plea is ultimately "an important step toward accountability for the defendant, closure for our community and justice for Darnell."
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