SEBASTIAN McDONALD - 11 Months/ Accused:Father-Christopher McDonald - Redding CA

An 11-month-old boy was found dead just outside
of Redding about 12 hours after he was reported missing Thursday.
Police say they may charge the man who last had custody of the little
boy with kidnapping and homicide.
Officers and search and
rescue volunteers found Sabastian McDonalds at the bottom of a steep
embankment off of State Route 299 about one mile east of Redding at
about 7:30 p.m., said Redding Police Sgt. Bill Schueller.
Sabastian was last seen in the custody of his mother's boyfriend, 23-year-old
Christopher McDonalds, Schueller said. McDonalds had hitchhiked his way
to Whiskeytown National Recreation Area off of State Route 299, where
officers took him into custody. The little boy wasn't with McDonalds
when he was arrested, Schueller said.
Schueller said 60 search
and rescue volunteers, the multi-agency Child Abduction Response Team,
the FBI and CHP assisted the Redding Police Department in the search.
Officers are continuing to investigate Christopher McDonalds' actions
when he was with Sabastian, Schueller said.
”We're just trying to get a timeline down of what he did before he left
Sabastian and hitchhiked out of town,” he said.
The Redding Police Department is asking anyone who may have seen
Christopher McDonald with the child, and anyone who may have given him a
ride to call the police department at 530-225-4564.
http://www.times-standard.com/alerts/ci_20390520/missing-11-month-old-from-redding-found-dead

An 11-month-old baby boy missing since at least Thursday morning was
found dead along Highway 299. The baby's body was found around 7:30
p.m. Thursday near Eureka Way and Sunset Way in Redding.The mother's ex-boyfriend Christopher McDonald, 23, was booked into the Shasta County jail for kidnapping and murder.Investigators
revealed Friday they believe McDonald may have traveled on foot with
11-month-old Sabastian McDonald from the South Market Street area
sometime during the early morning hours of April 12th, 2012. He may have
been wearing the long shorts and black sweatshirt. It is believed
McDonald was carrying a large green nylon bag with brown straps.Anyone
that may have seen McDonald or found a discarded backpack in the
downtown or Eureka Way area is asked to call the Investigations Division
at 225-4214.Dozens of members of law enforcement fanned out across the city Thursday afternoon searching for the child.Sabastian
was reported missing by his mother Heather Giffords around 7 a.m.
Thursday morning. She told police Sabastian had last been seen in the
care of her ex-boyfriend, Christopher McDonald late Wednesday evening.Police
found McDonald near Whiskeytown Recreation Area around 10 a.m.
Thursday, but the baby was not with him. Investigators say McDonald was
uncooperative.Giffords had been staying at the Good News Rescue
Mission in Redding with Sebastian and another child. Giffords, McDonald
and the two children had been travelling through the Northstate for a
couple of weeks. They are originally from Wyoming. Although
Christopher McDonald and Sabastian McDonald share the same last name,
police say Christopher was not the boy's father.

http://www.krcrtv.com/news/30885112/detail.html

Redding Police are seeking new details in yesterday’s homicide that
left 11 month old Sebastian McDonald dead along a Redding highway.
Police released Surveillance pictures today of the suspect Christopher
McDonald wearing long shorts and a black t-shirt. These pictures were
taken just before Wednesday nights kidnapping.

Police are
trying to learn how McDonald got from downtown Redding to a location
near Eureka way and Buenaventura Boulevard, where the baby was found.

People
across Redding today were in mourning after hearing yesterday’s heart
wrenching news that the 11 month old had been murdered.

“I regret
to inform you that we have located Sebastian McDonald's body along HWY
299 West,” Redding Police Chief Robert Paoletti was visibly shaken when
he delivered the news of Sebastian McDonald's death on Thursday night.

“Christopher
McDonald is in custody and will be booked into Shasta county jail for
kidnapping and murder later this evening,” Paoletti said.

Police
were searching the area of Hwy 299 and Buenaventura based on several
tips, including the suspect admitting that's where he left the baby.

Chris Solberg, with the Redding Coalition for the Homeless, says he had a hunch that lead him to help out the officers.

“I
said ‘I am just out here looking for that little child’, he said ‘well
you are looking in the right spot,’ and then I said ‘are you looking for
a homeless camp’ and he said ‘yes’ and so I pointed him up here,”
Solberg said Friday afternoon as he revisited the sight.

Solberg added that the officer bolted down the hill to the encampment and his worst fears were confirmed.

“As
he was going down he said, "we have an umbrella" and when he got down
to the pile of homeless material, he again looked under the umbrella and
turned around, I’ll never forget the look on his face when he turned
around, the look on his face and as big as his eyes were, he said
something to the effect of well, they had found him,” Solberg said.

Across
town, at the Good News Rescue Mission, people were not sure how to
react to the news that a child who had been staying there was now dead.

“You
know the word that I am hearing a lot is freaked out, people are, as
they begin to wake up to it, I think that people are shocked and very
concerned,” Pastor Dave Honey said, still emotional himself.

“it’s
just, it’s a tragedy, you know, it’s too close to home, its unspeakable
is all I can say,” said Anthony Douglas, a resident at the Mission.

The Mission brought in clinicians to help guest cope with the loss, they are also planning services for the young child.

An autopsy, scheduled for Monday, should reveal that baby's cause of death.

Christopher McDonald will be arraigned on charges of kidnapping and murder on Monday in Shasta County Court.

http://www.khsltv.com/content/localnews/story/Redding-Reacts-to-Babys-Murder/FG51DJNNPUK8H8T2Fri93w.cspx

It was the man accused of kidnapping and murdering his girlfriend's
11-month-old son who told police where he left the child, a Redding
police sergeant said Friday.


But, he said, murder suspect Christopher James McDonald, 23, has been
far from being cooperative with police in their ongoing investigation
of Sebastian McDonald's death.


"I would never describe him as being cooperative," Sgt. Bill Schueller said Friday.


Sebastian was the son of McDonald's former girlfriend, but the
suspect is not the baby's father, police said. Schueller declined to say
if McDonald has confessed to killing the child, nor would he say if the
infant had any obvious injuries when police found him Monday evening.


The boy's body was discovered just before 8 p.m. Thursday down a
steep embankment about 50 feet from Highway 299 near Buenaventura
Boulevard. He was only about two weeks away from his first birthday.


An autopsy is scheduled for Monday.


That's also the same day McDonald is likely to be arraigned in Shasta County Superior Court on murder and kidnapping charges.


The district attorney's office had not filed charges against him as of late Friday, according to electronic court records.


As police investigators continued all day Friday to try to gather
evidence against McDonald and to try to retrace his steps from Wednesday
night to Thursday, they released a surveillance photograph of him taken
Wednesday night in a waiting room at Shasta Regional Medical Center in
Redding.


He had gone to the hospital that night with Sebastian's mother, Heather Gifford, who was feeling ill, Schueller said.


Photographs taken at the Redding hospital show McDonald in the waiting room with a car seat containing the 11-month-old boy.


Gifford returned to the Good News Rescue Mission's House of Hope on
South Market Street about 11:30 p.m. Wednesday, Schueller said.


But due to her illness, he said, Gifford asked McDonald to look after her son as she cared for her daughter.


Police said it's believed McDonald may have walked with the child
from the South Market Street area during the early morning hours of
Thursday.


It's believed McDonald may have been wearing long shorts and a black
sweatshirt and carrying a large green nylon bag with brown straps.


Anyone who may have seen McDonald, or who may have found a discarded
backpack in the downtown or Eureka Way area, is asked to call police
investigators at 225-4214.


Schueller said investigators focused Friday on contacting Eureka Way
businesses to see if they might have surveillance video of the suspected
killer or if anyone remembered seeing him.


But, he said, Friday afternoon, the search turned up nothing new.


He said a surveillance video taken earlier from one business appears
to show McDonald early Thursday carrying a backpack and possibly
carrying some type of object.


But the video is grainy and investigators were working to have it enhanced, he said.


Sebastian, who had been staying at the mission with his mother and sister, was reported missing about 7 a.m. Thursday.


Police have said the family is from Wyoming and had been staying in Redding for about two weeks.


Schueller said Gifford, who is cooperating with police and is not a
suspect in the case, had been traveling through the area with McDonald.


Both she and her young daughter, who is about 4 or 5, are being cared for by victim-witness officials, he said.
http://www.redding.com/news/2012/apr/13/police-say-murder-suspect-pointed-them-to-babys/

REDDING, Calif. -- Shasta County authorities say a man suspected of killing
his girlfriend's baby son attempted suicide in jail.
Sheriff's officials said Monday that 23-year-old Christopher James McDonald was
discovered in Shasta County Jail at 1:35 p.m. Sunday. He was taken to a
Redding area hospital where he is in critical condition.
Officials say there is no evidence of foul play.
The Redding Record-Searchlight (http://bit.ly/HP36kD) reports that
McDonald was scheduled to be arraigned Monday in connection with the
kidnapping and murder of his girlfriend's 11-month-old son, Sabastian McDonald.
The coroner's office determined the boy had died of blunt force trauma to the head.
Redding police say the baby victim is not related to the suspect even though they have the same last name.

http://www.sacbee.com/2012/04/16/4418797/suspected-baby-killer-attempts.html

The grief-stricken 21-year-old homeless mother of an 11-month-old boy
allegedly murdered last week by her ex-boyfriend said today that the
father of her two children often physically abused her during their
volatile relationship.


Heather Gifford said she had just told Christopher James McDonald she
was leaving him for good so she could go back to school to make
something of her life.


McDonald, 23, died Tuesday after hanging himself from a be sheet
Sunday at Shasta County jail, where he was awaiting murder charges in
the death of the infant, Sabastian Karter Gifford.


“I don’t know what happened,” said Heather Gifford, often fighting
back tears during a news conference at the Shasta County district
attorney’s office.


Gifford, who had not spoken to reporters since the death of her son,
also said she believed McDonald “took the easy way out” by committing
suicide.


“He got what he deserved,” she said, though she had wanted him to stand trial for Sabastian’s killing.


She said McDonald had been a good father to their son and
four-year-old daughter and that she would “never imagine” he was capable
of causing them harm.


“He was good around my kids,” Gifford said “He acted like a good father.”


But the same could not be said of their own relationship.


“He hit me all the time,” she said, describing McDonald, whom she had
met about five years ago in Gillette, Wyo., as controlling and
obsessive. “He was a very angry person a lot of the time.”


Nevertheless, she said, the boyish-faced McDonald could also turn on
the charm when he wanted, flattering her about her appearance and saying
he loved her.


“He told me everything I wanted to hear,” she said.


Gifford originally told law enforcement officers that McDonald was
not Sabastian’s father. She admitted she had lied about the boy’s
parentage because she believed police would not have aggressively
investigated her son’s disappearance last week had they known McDonald
was the father.


Any mother would have done the same, she said.


Gifford made her comments the morning after a Thursday night memorial
service at Lake Redding Park to remember the boy who was found dead off
Eureka Way last week in a garbage-strewn clearing.


The down-on-their-luck family of four, which had been on the road
trying to seek a better life, arrived in Redding about three weeks ago
after running out of gas and money, Gifford said.


They had been living in a white SUV parked near the Good News Rescue
Mission, where they received baby food, bread and other groceries.


Gifford and her two children later stayed at the House of Hope, a
women’s shelter, while McDonald continued to live out of the SUV.


Gifford was accompanied by McDonald and her two children on the night
of April 11 when she went to Shasta Regional Medical Center for
treatment of unspecified “medical issues.”


She said she and McDonald had argued earlier, but she returned later
that night to the House of Hope with their daughter, Makayla, after
giving Sebastian to McDonald to care for because she was unable to look
after both children.


Gifford said she had no qualms about having McDonald look after the boy because he had always been good to their children.


Only the morning before, she said, the family enjoyed a visit to a park, laughing and playing together.


“It was a good day,” she said.


But the following day would turn into a nightmare after she could not find baby Sabastian.


The child was reported missing around 7 a.m., and McDonald was found
by rangers in the Whiskeytown National Recreation Area west of Redding
between 9:30 a.m. and 10 a.m., after hitching a ride there from Eureka
Way and Buenaventura Boulevard, police have said.


The person who gave McDonald the ride told officers McDonald did not have the child with him at that time.


The infant’s body was found shortly after 8 p.m., about 50 feet off
Eureka Way, after McDonald told officers where he had left the child,


An autopsy later determined the child died from blunt force trauma.


Since her son’s death, Gifford said, she has told her daughter that
Sabastian is “up in Heaven with God,” but has not said anything to her
about her father’s death.


She also responded to barbed criticisms of her voiced by McDonald’s
family, including his brother and mother, saying they were well aware
that he abused her and that McDonald’s mother never did like her.


“They know,” she said. “They have seen what Christopher had done to me.”


Prosecutors and police have said Gifford is not a suspect in the child’s death and will not be charged.


Although Gifford is not sure of her future or where to go, she will
not go back to Wyoming, but wants to be closer to her own family.


Gifford’s father, Thomas, who lives in New Mexico, also spoke with
reporters Friday, saying the horror of the past few days has been
unfathomable.


“This is something you watch on True TV or Lifetime,” he said.


He backed up his daughter’s assertions that McDonald could be
irrational and obsessive, remembering once when his daughter left him
and came to New Mexico, only to have McDonald show up at his home
wanting to get back together.


“I’ll never understand their relationship,” he said.


Both said they were grateful for the community’s support during their ordeal.


“Thank you, thank you all,” he said, patting his heart.
http://www.redding.com/news/2012/apr/20/mother-slain-boy-says-mcdonald-was-abusive-control/