The 2-year-old Florida boy who was found dead in a lake in the jaws of an alligator last month died by drowning, police said Monday.
Taylen Mosley’s cause of death was determined by the Pinellas County Medical Examiner, the St. Petersburg Police Department said in a statement.
The child’s father, Thomas Mosley, 21, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of both his son and his son's mother, Pashun Jeffery, 20, police said. A police spokesperson said Monday that Mosley threw or placed his son in Lake Maggiore, where the child's body was eventually found, NBC News reported.
Taylen Mosley had been the subject of a frantic search after his mother was discovered slain in their apartment with the toddler nowhere to be found.
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Officers searching for the toddler at Lake Maggiore a few miles from the apartment complex noticed an alligator “with an object in its mouth” that they quickly realized was a child's body, police said. They fired shots at the reptile, which dropped the body. The alligator was euthanized.
Jeffery, who worked at a CVS, and her son were last seen by family members around 5:20 p.m. Wednesday, March 29. Police said around 8:30 p.m. neighbors heard a loud commotion near their apartment but police were not called.
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The next day, Jeffery's mother contacted the apartment complex property manager after not hearing from her daughter. That's when they found her dead in what Holloway described as “a very violent crime scene" in which Jeffery had been stabbed numerous times.
Family members said Jeffery and Taylen had just moved into the apartment complex about a month ago.
Attorney information for Thomas Mosley was not immediately available.
