Police find body of 6-year-old Faye Swetlik 3 days after family reports her missing

An autopsy on Faye Marie Swetlik is scheduled Friday at Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, according to the Lexington County Coroner's Office.

Law enforcement officers found the body of the 6-year-old around 11 a.m. Thursday in the Cayce neighborhood where she lived.

The discovery followed days of searching in and around the Churchill Heights neighborhood, according to Cayce Public Safety Director Byron Snellgrove.

The case is now being investigated as a homicide. No arrest has been made.

Snellgrove reported the body of a dead male was also found in the Churchill Heights neighborhood during the search for Faye. There were no additional details about the discovery of that second body.

It's been three days since Faye's family first reported her missing. Faye's family told police she was last seen playing in the front yard of her Cayce home.

The search for the bubbly first-grader with strawberry blonde hair and a toothy smile captivated the state and the nation. Thousands of concerned strangers shared the call for information and prayers for her safe return on Twitter and Facebook.

On Thursday evening, some of these strangers pushed strollers through the muddy parking lot next to the train tracks on Main Street in Kershaw, a town about 60 miles away from Faye's backyard.

There were 100 or 150 gathered. The crowd was hard to count — many were children, not much older than Faye and hard to see from a distance. They were much shorter than their loved ones who held them closely.

A baby's coos punctuated Pastor Cotton Pate's prayers blaring from a speaker sitting in the back of a pickup truck. The head of the Frontline Biker Church prayed for Faye, Faye's family, the other parents who will go to bed tonight not knowing if their missing children are safe.

As he spoke and the crowd sang, women cried for another's daughter, tissues in one hand, a candle in the other. Chris Roberts showed his son how to hold his just right so the flame wouldn't die out — and he wouldn't burn his fingers that were too small for the holder.

As he prayed, Roberts, a father of four, considered how children are precious souls. And they are not supposed to be taken this young.

She was his son's age.

Gary Sowell stood nearby Roberts. He rushed to the vigil after his final meeting of the day, driven by what he called his genuine Christian love for people, his concern for that family and what that little girl he never met went through.

As he prayed, he worried about what her last memories must have been. He's a retired state trooper. He can't leave behind some of his own tragic memories from those days.

Cassandra Davis didn't know the folks or the church here. But she was called to be here with them, she said. On Friday morning, her grandson will walk the school halls that Faye should have. Her grandson connects her to Faye.

She's thought about her son's schoolmate every minute she's been missing, Davis said. And since the news Thursday afternoon, she's thought about wanting to protect hearts from the evils of the world. She wondered how grandparents and parents even talk to their children about what happened.

Much remains unknown.

The Associated Press reported that her family discovered her missing a short time later at about 3:45 p.m. and called 911 after looking for her for about an hour. During the search effort, police circulated video of Faye getting off her school bus Monday afternoon.

On Wednesday, authorities began circulating images of two vehicles seen in the Churchill Heights neighborhood during the time Faye was last seen.

By Thursday morning, the Cayce Department of Public Safety reported one of the vehicles had been identified, but the department did not provide more information about it.

Faye was a first-grader at Springdale Elementary School, a part of Lexington School District 2.

The department held its scheduled daily press conference at about 10:45 a.m. Thursday. By 1 p.m. officials called an impromptu press conference to provide the latest information.

Earlier this week, authorities said they did not have evidence that Faye was abducted.

District spokeswoman Dawn Kujawa said in an email that Lexington 2 is making additional counselors available to students, faculty and staff in the wake of Faye's death.

"We are heart-broken with news of the death of Faye Swetlik," Kujawa said. "... When the school community experiences a tragedy like the loss of a child, it deeply affects us all."

The district also sent tips to parents about how to talk to their children about what happened.

"We know how hard something like this is even for adults to understand," a message the district sent to parents said.

Police are asking anyone with information related to the investigation to call a hotline at 803-205-4444.