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The father of a missing 3-year-old has been arrested and charged Monday after he changed his story about her disappearance, Texas police said.

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Wesley Mathews provided “an alternate statement of events” about his daughter Sherin to detectives hours after the body of a small child was found, Richardson police said. Mathews had claimed she went missing after he sent her alone into an alley when she wouldn’t drink her milk. Authorities did not provide details of Mathews’ new statement.

He has been charged with Injury to a Child, a first degree felony punishable by life or from five to 99 years in prison.

Earlier Monday, police said they have “most likely” found the body of Sherin Mathews.

Officers and search dogs on Sunday morning discovered a small child’s body in a culvert near Spring Valley and Bowser roads, less than a mile from the Mathews’ home in a suburb north of Dallas. Sherin disappeared Oct. 7.

Photo by Richardson Texas Police Department via AP

A police spokesman told reporters that investigators have no reason to believe that the body belongs to another missing child. They are awaiting positive identification and for an autopsy to determine what killed the child. Investigators have notified Sherin’s parents.

“Worst news finding child’s body,” Richardson Police Chief Jimmy Spivey tweeted. But if the recovered body is Sherin’s, Spivey tweeted, he’s “happy [it has been] recovered so properly laid to rest.”