Published: November 26, 2007 12:26 pm      

Search for ID of girl leads to arrest of Houston-area pair

GALVESTON — Authorities said Monday they were “fairly confident” of the identity of a 2-year-old girl whose body washed ashore in a storage bin in Galveston Bay. The girl’s mother and male companion remained in custody after their weekend arrest.

Authorities are awaiting DNA test results but believe the girl is 2-year-old Riley Ann Sawyers of Spring, 75 miles north of Galveston, Galveston County sheriff’s Maj. Ray Tuttoilmondo said at a news conference Monday.

“It was a few weeks ago I held up this little shoe and asked, ’Who is Baby Grace? Who does this belong to,”’ Tuttoilmondo said. “We’re now farily confident we know the answer to that.”

Tuttoilmondo declined to discuss specifics while the investigation continued.

“There is a whole lot more work to do,” he said.

The girl’s mother, Kimberly Dawn Trenor, 19, and Royce Clyde Zeigler II, 24, reportedly told relatives that someone claiming to be an Ohio social worker took the child in July. But Trenor never told police she was missing, Tuttoilmondo said.

Trenor and Zeigler were arrested early Saturday and charged with injury to a child and tampering with evidence, Tuttoilmondo said. The couple remain jailed in lieu of $350,000 bail each.

It’s unclear whether they are married, Tuttoilmondo said. Riley’s father lives in Ohio.

A sheriff’s deputy and an FBI agent visited the girl’s relatives in Mentor, Ohio, Sunday to deliver the news.

“We simply wanted to ensure personal notice and continue with the investigation of this tragic death,” Galveston County District Attorney Kurt Sistrunk said.

Tuttoilmondo declined to say what was found or what the couple may have said about Riley’s disappearance.

The two have attorneys, but Tuttoilmondo could not immediately provide their names.

Last week, authorities said the families of eight missing children from across the United States were being asked to provide DNA samples. Tuttoilmondo said they were selected from 110 cases of missing children who matched a description of the girl being called “Baby Grace.” The child was described as being 2 or 3.

After hearing about the discovery of the girl in a plastic storage bin Oct. 29, Riley’s paternal grandmother, Sheryl Sawyers, called Texas authorities to see whether a missing-person report had been filed in Riley’s case. When she saw a sketch of Baby Grace, she thought it might be her granddaughter.

Sheryl Sawyers said she has not seen Riley since Trenor moved with the girl to Spring this year to be with Zeigler, whom she met online, the Galveston County Daily News reported Sunday.

Sawyers said that her son and Kimberly Trenor had Riley while they were teenagers and that the three of them lived with her in Mentor, Ohio, for about two years.

The girl’s grandfather, Ray Sawyers, told The Associated Press on Sunday that authorities had asked his family not to comment about the case.

Riley’s father, Robert Sawyers, 20, has said he hopes his daughter is not Baby Grace.

“I think she might be, but I’m hoping she’s not,” Robert Sawyers told the Houston Chronicle for a story in Sunday’s online edition. “The picture I have and the picture of Baby Grace is so similar — it kind of scares me.”