MILWAUKEE (TCD) — Police arrested a 15-year-old male and 27-year-old male this week after a missing 5-year-old boy was found dead inside a dumpster.
Milwaukee Police said in a statement Prince McRee was reported as “critical missing” after he was last seen Wednesday, Oct. 25, on the 2400 block of North 54th Street. The 5-year-old’s body was found the next day at 8:50 a.m. in a dumpster on the 5500 block of West Vilet Street.
McRee’s cause of death remains pending.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, McRee’s mother saw him the morning of Oct. 25 at approximately 9 a.m., then reported him missing around 1 p.m. The boy’s parents knocked on doors of houses in the neighborhood after finding out he was nowhere to be found.
Wisconsin State Sen. LaTonya Johnson lives near McRee’s family and told the Journal Sentinel the child’s family was “distraught.”
“It was a shock,” she said. “This neighborhood is relatively quiet. You don’t see a lot of police activity. We knew it was something serious.”
Michael Murphy, an alderman for the area, said, “It’s a terrible tragedy for the whole community to see another child so senselessly lose their life and then to be discarded in the manner in which they found the child.”
WISN-TV reports the two people who were arrested live in the same building as McRee’s family.
McRee’s grandmother shared with the news station that the boy “loved to have fun, loved to play games. He’s willing to help anybody and he made friends at school. He loved to make friends at school.”
