Police looking for a 7-month-old boy who has been missing since early August and is feared dead searched a nature area Tuesday near a suspect's home in which investigators had reported finding a shirt with a blood-like stain.
Ummad Rushdi is jailed in lieu of $750,000 bail in the disappearance of Hamza Ali. Police have said Rushdi told his brother he shook the boy to death and buried him more than a week ago.
Investigators from suburban Philadelphia's Upper Darby, where Hamza disappeared Aug. 4, were in York and Lancaster counties to continue the search, Upper Darby police Chief Michael Chitwood said. Police didn't need a warrant for the nature area, he said.
"We got information from a family member that that park was frequented many times by Ummad,'' Chitwood said.
Rushdi, 30, is charged with unlawful restraint, false imprisonment, child custody interference and endangering a child's welfare. A message left for Michael Malloy, listed as Rushdi's attorney, was not immediately returned Tuesday.
Police on Tuesday obtained another warrant to allow them to go back into the home Rushdi shared with Hamza, the boy's mother and others in the York suburbs. They were looking for blood or DNA, digging tools, receipts, computers, bedding, maps and other items.
The warrant application said police earlier recovered from the home in a plastic bag a white shirt with a blood-like stain and another stain that appeared to be a bodily fluid.
Local
Breaking news and the stories that matter to your neighborhood.
The affidavit also stated that a search dog led police to a large rock along the Susquehanna River near Columbia, not far from where Rushdi's brother Jawwad Rushdi's Lincoln Continental had apparently become stuck. Police have said Ummad Rushdi may have taken the child from Upper Darby in that vehicle.
The affidavit said that on the rock there was a pillowcase the boy's mother said belonged to Rushdi.
