Dalton Mesarchik

**Dalton Mesarchik** (April 29, 1995 - March 26, 2003) was American boy.

## Death

### Disappearance

Dalton Mesarchik was waiting expectantly on his porch for a church van to pick him up on the evening of March 26, 2003. The 7-year-old had attended children’s Bible study groups at the First Church of Nazarene.

His older sister, Deana, was also going to the Wednesday night Bible study, but she had gone to a friend’s house to wait for the bus there. By 7:00 pm, Dalton was tired of waiting. He went back inside his Morrell Street home and told his mother that the van never showed up.

Dalton’s older sister called from her friend’s house a few minutes later. She told her mother that she and her friend heard the van was running late but was still coming, so she was going to wait a while longer. When Michelle Mesarchik relayed this message to Dalton, he grabbed his coat and went back out onto the porch to see if the bus would come along after all.

It turned out that the church’s van driver had a family emergency that night and had not been able to report for work. Although the First Church of Nazarene’s policy was to notify parents whenever transportation was not available, this somehow got overlooked on this particular night, and no phone calls were made.

Around 7:45 pm, Deana returned home and told her mother that she assumed the van wasn’t going to show up that night. She then asked her where Dalton was, as he was no longer on the front porch. Michelle was startled; she had assumed that Dalton had been picked up and was on his way to church. She rushed outside and took a quick look around, but saw no sign of the little boy.

Michelle had last seen Dalton at 7:15 pm; he was on the porch waiting for the church van at that point. Fighting panic, she phoned the First Church of Nazarene to see if Dalton was there. When she learned that the driver had called out that night and the van had not been running, Michelle was certain that something terrible had happened to her son. He was not the sort of boy who would wander away from home without first telling her where he was going, and she immediately called the Streator Police Department and reported him missing.

Once they realized that Dalton was not in the immediate area surrounding his home, police brought in bloodhounds to aid them in their search. Michelle quickly produced three pairs of Dalton’s shoes so they could familiarize themselves with his scent, and the dogs took off. They didn’t go very far. Each dog picked up Dalton’s scent on the enclosed porch and followed it outside, then stopped as soon as they reached the street. It appeared that Dalton had gotten into a vehicle right in front of his house.

None of the bloodhounds were able to follow Dalton’s scent past his street, leaving police temporarily stymied. They realized that the child had likely been abducted, and decided to initiate an Amber Alert. This would immediately expand the search for Dalton, alerting area law enforcement as well as the news media that there was a missing child

### Body Discover

By the next morning, word had spread about the missing child and more than 500 volunteers showed up to assist in the search for him. They were broken up into smaller groups and sent throughout Streator, combing through residential streets, wooded areas, and along railroad tracks and ditches.

Shortly before noon, the search was called off. A fisherman had found Dalton’s body in the Vermillion River, about three miles south of his home. The 7-year-old had been bludgeoned to death; he was still fully clothed. The Amber Alert was cancelled and a homicide investigation began.

With the cause of death being blunt force trauma to the head. His murder sadly remains unsolved.