CAYCE, S.C. — Cayce officials announced Tuesday that they now believe that a neighbor killed Faye Swetlik, the Cayce girl who's disappearance made national news and triggered an outpouring of concern from the community.
Director of the Cayce Department of Public Safety Brian Snellgrove announced the new developments at a news conference and went over a timeline of everything that happened in the disappearance of 6-year-old Faye Swetlik from her front yard in Cayce, SC to the discovery of her remains and those of the man who they said killed her.
Monday February 10th
3:45 PM - Faye Swetlik's mother notices her daughter is missing from the front yard of their home in the Churchill Heights neighborhood. She begins to call neighbors and friends. She frantically looked around the neighborhood for her daughter
5:00 PM - Faye Swetlik's mother places a frantic call to 911 to report her daughter is missing.
5:03 PM - Over 50+ police, first responders and firefighters arrive on the scene to help search for Faye. They speak to family members and neighbors.
5:30 PM - Cayce command staff asks for assistance from local agencies and organizes canvas door to door search and do a grid search.
6:00 PM - Local law enforcement places call to ask for help from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) and the FBI after not being able to locate Faye.
7:00 PM - Law enforcement presence grows to 90, SLED's helicopter is in use and multiple K-9's from various agencies are helping in the search.
Faye at this time is also placed in the NCIC (National Crime Information Data Base) as a missing child and a BOLO (Be On The Lookout) for her was issued to every agency across the region. Pictures and information distributed to social media and it was shared by 1,000's of people, according to Chief Snellgrove.
Lexington County Sheriff's Office and the Cayce Department of Public Safety set up a mobile command center in the middle of the Churchhill Heights neighborhood so that they could maintain a presence of officers in the neighborhood 24/7.
The Cayce City hall was converted into a much larger command center for the over 300 law enforcement and firefighters in the region that joined the search.
Cayce officers shut down the neighborhood and checked every car going in or out of the neighborhood and to talked to anyone they saw.
February 11 Tuesday AM
A dedicated Faye Swetlik hotline is set up. Officers say they'd get hundreds of tips through that service.
Roadblock operations were set up in the Churchhill Heights neighborhood. Law enforcement speaks to every car and person leaving the neighborhood and asks for permission to check each vehicle.
Chief Snellgrove said that officers were provided with a standard FBI form specifically targeted to glean information to find Faye. This is what the officers used to talk to anyone in the case. Coordinated effort with multiple agencies to search all the homes in Churchhill Heights. Goal was to speak to every occupant of every residence no matter how long it took, said Snellgrove.
Grid searches of the perimeter were conducted multiple times throughout the day. Officers checked every pool, creek, trashcan, shed or any other structure that a young girl could be in and K-9s continued to be used in the search.
February 12 Wednesday
More grid searches were conducted, talking to neighbors and searching vehicles in and out of the neighborhood.
Officers also spoke that day with 30-year-old Coty Taylor, the man who officers say killed Swetlik. They said he was cooperative and agreed to let them search his home. Officers said they didn't find anything that indicated he was involved in her disappearance.
February 13 Thursday
Cayce Department of Public Safety brings in another city department because this is Churchhill Heights trash pickup day.
Officers were tasked to check each bin that was deposited into the trash trucks. They combed through all the debris looking for clues.
At 10 AM a trashcan near 602 Piccadilly Square was emptied and officers found a couple of significant pieces of evidence- a child's polka dot book and a soup ladle that had freshly dug dirt in it.
Chief Snellgrove was on the scene at the time and after seeing the evidence called for assistance to do a grid search behind Londonderry and Piccadilly Square.
As officers were gathering together, the chief went behind the town homes to a little wooded area and just before 10:30 AM He then located the body of Faye Swetlik.
At 10:30 AM other Cayce officers were notified of a man bleeding on a back patio at 602 Piccadilly Square. Officers went to his aid and found a deceased white male. That was Taylor.
Immediately SLED crime scene unit took DNA from both crime scenes and from inside the apartment. That DNA, once tested, connected the pieces according to law enforcement.
Evidence has led police to believe that Taylor killed Faye and was the sole perpetrator.
Chief Snellgrove says Faye's body was moved at night to behind the townhouse where she was found early Thursday morning.
Four searches of the area from the time she went missing to the night before she was found were conducted.
By Friday at 5PM
82 leads from the hotline were followed up, video from 50 locations and over 756 gigabytes of video were watched.
February 13 Thursday
An autopsy is conducted at the Medical University of Charleston where it was determined that Swetlik had been suffocated and Taylor had killed himself.
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