Sheriff’s office: Body found on Washington island beach is missing boy; mother still missing

Authorities: Body on Wash. beach is missing boy

SEATTLE — A child’s body found Thursday on an island beach in Puget Sound is that of an 8-year-old boy who vanished last weekend with his mother, a Pierce County sheriff’s spokesman said.

Positive identification was based on Azriel Carver’s clothing, mohawk haircut and “looking at pictures of him,” spokesman Ed Troyer said.

The Pierce County medical examiner’s office plans an autopsy Friday to determine cause of death.

The body was found on Fox Island, southwest of Tacoma.

No sign was found Thursday of the boy’s mother, Shantina “Kat” Smiley, 29, of Silverdale, who disappeared with him on Saturday night. Troyer said the beach was searched about 500 yards in each direction from the boy’s body. Divers on a boat searched as well and a Coast Guard helicopter and sheriff’s office plane flew overhead.

That search may resume Friday, depending on weather, he said.

Smiley’s abandoned minivan, partially submerged with its doors open, was found Sunday on a remote Olympia-area beach about 12 miles south of Fox Island.

A wallet containing her driver’s license, some cash and credit cards was found in the van, but neither she nor her son was anywhere in sight.

Jay Carver, Azriel’s father who flew here from Buffalo, N.Y., this week, went to the beach where the boy was found. Troyer said the father was not involved in identifying the body.

“You really don’t know what you have in your life until they’re gone,” Carver told KING-TV. “It’s a sad turn of events.”

Two mismatched shoes, a partially full and corked wine bottle, an inhaler and an orange ball have washed ashore since the van was found.

Thurston County sheriff’s Lt. Chris Mealy said the items apparently belonged to the boy or his mother.

Smiley was heading from her home in Silverdale to her stepfather’s house in southwest Washington when she and her son disappeared Saturday night. Silverdale is about 16 miles west of Seattle, across Puget Sound.

Besides searching the area, investigators looked at phone records and talked to people who know Smiley and her son or may have met her Saturday night as she drove through the back roads of Washington state. Her fiance, Robb Simmons, told authorities she was a recovering alcoholic who had relapsed last week.

“We are grieving the loss of Azriel, and praying for Shantina. We are all severely hurting. We are getting the family together so we can grieve together, and so we can have some sort of peace right now,” Simmons told the television station late Thursday.

He told The Associated Press he had no comment.

Mealy said there was no indication that a crime took place inside Smiley’s 2005 Dodge Caravan.