After her baby was buried alive, a South Carolina mother wonders why

Detectives dug quickly but carefully, as the baby’s cries beneath the freshly packed dirt grew louder and louder.

Koah Sharp, just shy of his first birthday, had been buried alive for about 24 hours in Lexington County, South Carolina, authorities said, entombed in a dog cage wrapped in a dirt-stained towel. Deputies dug up the 11-month-old baby Tuesday, surprised to find him breathing.

On Friday evening, Koah was in the arms of his 25-year-old pregnant mother, Dezarae Sharp, who was still trying to understand what had happened to her boy as she stroked his chubby baby cheeks again.

“I still can’t believe it,” Ms Sharp said in her first interview since the disappearance of her child, who is expected to be fully recovered. “It’s something you’d see in a movie. It’s something you’d see on TV. And the fact that it happened to him – I don’t know.”

Michael Comer, Koah’s father and Ms. Sharp’s ex-boyfriend, was arrested and charged with attempted murder, unlawful conduct toward a child, custodial interference and burglary.

“I didn’t think he could get this far,” Ms Sharp said.

“I want to be a family”

Koah’s disappearance and remarkable survival shocked people far beyond Lexington County, a booming manufacturing center that was both suburban and rural and close to the capital of Columbia.