Biehl said the police department, acting on a tip at 11:25 a.m. from an unknown caller who said he was an acquaintance of McKnight's boyfriend, Antwan Anderson, pointed the search to an area behind the Riverview Park Apartments, in the 4300 block of Riverside Drive, near Shoup Mill Road, in Harrison Twp.
McKnight's body was found behind the apartments along the river bank, on a steep embankment, Biehl said. She died of "intentional trauma," he said, echoing a preliminary ruling on the woman's cause of death. An autopsy is planned for Saturday morning.
Biehl said there is no evidence that the body of Zaden is in the area, but that the department would be issuing an alert for all area law enforcement jurisdictions located south along the river.
Thursday afternoon, Dayton homicide detectives searched in the same area, along the Stillwater River Trail in the area of Needmore Road and Frederick Pike, for McKnight and her son. Police have been operating on the theory that the two were presumed dead.
Detectives put up crime scene tape in the wooded area behind the apartments. At 2:30 p.m., a Dayton Fire Department search team put boats in the water near Shoup Mill Road and Lofty Oaks Lane. Just after 4 p.m., District Chief Vincent Wylie said those search teams called off the operation because of high water. They plan to resume the search by boat this weekend or Monday.
The search for McKnight and her son intensified after McKnight's boyfriend, 26-year-old Antwan Anderson, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound during a shootout with police Monday evening. Police had asked him to come in so they could question him about McKnight and her son, but he did not respond to the request.
McKnight's mother, Michelle Williams, reported to police on March 29 that her daughter and grandson were missing. She called authorities after McKnight's co-workers from her two jobs at Soma Intimates at The Greene and Ele Cakes in West Carrollton called to ask why she hadn't shown up for work in several days.
At Friday's news conference, Biehl announced that Williams has asked for privacy.
He also asked, as he did during the search for McKnight, that anyone who has information about McKnight or Zaden to call the police department at 937-333-1079.
At the bakery, two of McKnight's co-workers, Kelsey Hixson and Ron'dricka Booker, wore decorative buttons off their left shoulders that featured a photo of McKnight and her son.
"I was the last person who contacted her on the 25th [March], through a text, asking if she could cover someone's shift," Hixson said. "She said yes and that was the last we heard from her. She didn't show up the next day for her shift."
Booker called Zaden a mama's boy who regularly planted kisses on his mom.
"I would do anything in this world to help her or to not end up where we are now," Booker said.
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