Bounced between homes
Shaniya has bounced between homes since birth, shared between a mother and a father who conceived her during a chance encounter one night.
Carey Lockhart had been the girl's primary guardian because her father, Bradley Lockhart, worked long stretches as a building contractor at out-of-state jobs.
"There was no denying that she was his," Carey Lockhart said of the resemblance between Shaniya and her father.
Lockhart described Shaniya as a joyful girl who loved to dress up in pretty clothes and make her cousins laugh. She was a kindergartner at Morganton Road Elementary School in Fayetteville.
Though Bradley Lockhart and Antoinette Davis never married,
they shared responsibility for Shaniya from the start. Davis' interaction with her daughter was typically limited to occasional weekend visits, Lockhart said. Their custody arrangement was never formalized by the courts.
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Last Tuesday, Lockhart rang his sister with bizarre news. A neighbor called him to say that police were looking for Shaniya.
As they were talking on the phone, police knocked on
Carey Lockhart's door. They had found her name
listed as a guardian at Shaniya's elementary school.
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/local/story/1060102.html
