FortBendNow.com

Searchers have found the body of Teketria Buggs in the Brazos River, about 2 miles from the 12-year-old girl’s home where she was reported missing Dec. 3.

The Orchard girl’s body was discovered at about 1 p.m. Thursday by a four-person team from Texas EquuSearch and a cadaver dog, specially trained to detect human remains. The dog and team members were in a boat in the river.

EquuSearch Director Timothy Miller said he and a Fort Bend County Sheriff’s investigator were at a bridge on F.M. 1489 about a mile upstream from where the team was searching, when the team radioed they’d made the discovery.

“He cried, I cried, and then we shook hands and said ‘yes, we did it’,” Miller said.

At 2 p.m. Thursday, the body still was in the river as rescue workers awaited the arrival of a medical examiner. Fort Bend County Sheriff Milton Wright said officers from his department hadn’t yet arrived on the scene and thus the body wasn’t yet confirmed to be the Buggs girl. Later Thursday officials confirmed the identify.

The missing girl’s aunt, Joyce Smith, said the family had been made aware a body had been found, but had few details.

“She’s my niece, like my daughter,” Smith said of Teketria. “Oh my God. Oh my lord, who would do such a thing?”

Teketria Buggs was last seen alive on the evening of Dec. 2, asleep at her rural home on Johnson Road about a mile west of Orchard.

State, county and city law enforcement officers and volunteers conducted an intensive search beginning Dec. 4 for missing Teketria, at first concentrating on the 12-acre property and outbuildings around the girl’s home. Then searchers progressively expanded the search and included the nearby Brazos River.

But boats equipped with side-scan sonar, and two teams of divers failed to locate a body. By Dec. 9, Fort Bend County Sheriff’s deputies were pulled from the search. Two days later, volunteers for EquuSearch cut back on the scale of the search and concentrated on the river.

Those efforts paid off Thursday.

Miller said the dog played an important role in the discovery of the body, going into “alert” mode at a spot about a mile downstream from the F.M. 1489 bridge. As the boat moved closer to shore, the dog “alerted” again, Miller said, at which point team members saw the body floating in the water.

Miller said heavy rainfall on Wednesday likely will cause the river level to rise significantly before long, and so it was fortunate they were able to find the girl’s body today.

“This river’s going to be a whole new creature tomorrow,” he said. “If we wouldn’t have gotten her today, that could’ve been it.”

On Dec. 5, while the search was being conducted, sheriff’s investigators signaled an interest in the girl’s stepfather, Steven Carrington, 31, who is reportedly the last person to have seen the girl alive. Investigators learned Carrington had an outstanding warrant for failing to appear in court in a domestic violence case. They arrested him on that warrant under $3,000 bond.

Carrington was given a polygraph test, as was the girl’s mother, Laronald Foy. While he would not divulge results of the tests, Fort Bend County Sheriff Milton Wright has identified Carrington as a suspect in the case.

And last week, Wright said Carrington also has been and remains a suspect in the disappearance of a 21-year-old man, Corey Brooks, who was last seen at a family reunion in 1998.

Brooks’ mother, Carolyn Brooks of Rosenberg, told FortBendNow her son was living in the same house as Carrington at the time – on the same rural homestead where Teketria Buggs went missing.

Wright said on Thursday that Carrington still is in the county jail.

“This makes our case a little stronger now” that the body has been discovered, Wright said. “This is one step closer.”

The Orchard girl’s body was discovered at about 1 p.m. Thursday by a four-person team from Texas EquuSearch and a cadaver dog, specially trained to detect human remains. The dog and team members were in a boat in the river.

EquuSearch Director Timothy Miller said he and a Fort Bend County Sheriff’s investigator were at a bridge on F.M. 1489 about a mile upstream from where the team was searching, when the team radioed they’d made the discovery.

“He cried, I cried, and then we shook hands and said ‘yes, we did it’,” Miller said.