The 8-year-old ran past two gift bags with stuffed animals peeking out and straight to Brown County Sheriff’s Deputy Josh Stargell. She grabbed his leg and looked up at him with a smile.
On Jan. 26, at the Brown County Law Enforcement Center, local officers met the family of the girl they helped send back home after she was found with her noncustodial father in Brown County State Park late last month.
The last time Shauwntae Lockett was able to see her daughter, Deziraye, was Aug. 11, 2021. They were reunited Jan. 26 after Lockett and her husband, Kevin, made the long drive from Nevada to Indiana.
On Jan. 21, Deziraye’s father, Daniel N. Eggers, 33, of Lovelock, Nevada, was stopped by local police in the state park after Brian Foy, the park’s property security officer, alerted them to a suspicious situation.
Eggers was ultimately arrested on a warrant for taking his daughter against a custody order.
“We got pulled over, and I had to go with a foster mom then she (Shauwntae) found me. Then I went to DCS (Department of Child Services) and she (mom) picked me up, then all of this happened with taking a picture (with the officers),” 8-year-old Deziraye explained.
Foy came across Eggers’ vehicle in the state park after dark near the campground. Eggers told Foy he was almost out of gas. That’s when Foy noticed a little girl in the backseat.
“It was super dark and super cold,” Foy said.
“We get people that park and are making their way through, but when I saw her in the backseat, that just went from a relaxed interaction to, ‘We’ve got a little girl we need to take care of. What is his plan? Who is she?’”
Eggers told Foy that the girl was his daughter and they were looking for a place to camp. Foy helped him to get some gas.
“It wasn’t necessarily about him as long as she was safe. He had sleeping bags and a tent and a heater. He said he had everything he needed. But I’m not going to let a grown man have a child in the backseat with Nevada plates at 8 p.m. with no gas,” Foy said.
“You could just tell something was wrong. He was acting fishy. He wouldn’t let me near the car. When I gave him gas, I obviously had to go near the car, so I took him the gas, I had my head lamp on to try to take a look at her, to see if she was bruised, if anything was wrong.”
Indiana Conservation Officer Joseph Tenbarge and an officer he was training showed up to talk with Eggers further after Foy alerted them. The officers ran his license plate, but the car was not associated with an abduction from Nevada.
Eggers told Tenbarge they were traveling to South Dakota from Nevada.
“He had South Dakota pulled up on his phone. Indiana is not on the way from Nevada to South Dakota, so none of that makes sense,” Tenbarge said.
At that point, officers spoke with Deziraye, who said she had food, drinks, and that she was not in any harm. Eggers refused to give the conservation officers his identification and asked if he could go.
“At that point it, is a consensual encounter, so we couldn’t go any further,” Tenbarge said. But he knew something was wrong.
The vehicle had a headlight out, so officers at the park called the sheriff’s department to have deputies stationed at the park’s other two gates to stop Eggers on a traffic violation. Conservation officers do not have a pursuit policy and could not follow Eggers if he decided to flee.
“Immediately, I was like, ‘All available units, go.’ If it was any other day, I would have had one of them up north and the other one south (in the county),” dispatcher Kyrie Kessler said.
But luckily, officers were nearby, including Chief Deputy Brad Stogsdill who was off duty and happened to be driving through the park. Not even 10 seconds after the call went out, Stogsdill passed Eggers on the park road. Because he was in plain clothes and off duty, Stogsdill could not stop the vehicle for the headlight violation, so he turned around and followed, letting deputies on duty know where he was heading. They passed Deputy Scott Bowling who was stationed at a shelterhouse near the north gate.
“When he went past him, I backed off and let Scott get in between us, then as we went down the hill, he made an abrupt pull off the road,” Stogsdill said.
Eggers shut the car off and got out to walk toward Bowling, but returned to his car after Bowling told him to do so. Both officers noted that Eggers acted aggressively and asked why he was being stopped. He continued to refuse to give his driver’s license to Bowling. More officers arrived to assist, including Stargell, Nashville Police Patrolman Billy Bryant, and the conservation officers.
“My patience got thin with him. I opened the door and made him get out of the car, put him in cuffs immediately,” Bowling said.
“If he didn’t have something wrong, he would have given me his driver’s license right off the bat.”
While Bowling spoke with Eggers and checked his license, Stogsdill looked in the backseat to make sure Deziraye was OK.
“The car was full of stuff. She’s, like, in the very back passenger corner in the backseat, like, hiding. I am looking at her going, ‘Are you OK?’ and she’s like, ‘Yeah.’ I didn’t know what was going on,” Stogsdill said.
Eggers continued to tell police that she was his daughter and he had custody of her.
Around that time, Kessler discovered Eggers had a warrant out of Nevada and that police could transport him if he was arrested in a surrounding state. Kessler worked with dispatchers and police in Nevada to get the warrant adjusted to where it was nationwide extradition, meaning Eggers could be arrested and transported back to Nevada from anywhere in the country.
In the meantime, officers at the scene decided they were going to arrest Eggers for failing to identify himself during the traffic stop and that they would contact the Department of Child Services to care for the child. Kessler worked with Stargell at the scene to get a photo of the girl and confirm her identity with Nevada law enforcement.
“In my 32 years, this was one of the best joint operations, feel-good operations that I have ever been involved with. It was really good. It was good teamwork by everybody,” Stogsdill said.
But the arrest would not have happened if Foy had not followed his gut feeling that something was off. This was something he’d never experienced in his six years of working at the state park.
“Nevada plates with an 8-year-old girl and out of gas, a headlight out, all of these things, then getting out of the car, putting on sunglasses and walking up to me. Then he kind of changed his mind and thought, ‘That probably is not a good idea,’ so he took them off,” Foy said.
Bowling noted that the vehicle having a headlight out was key to making an arrest quickly before Eggers could leave the park.
Shauwntae Lockett was at work when she received the call that her daughter had been found. “I was screaming at the top of my lungs at work. … I am on a night shift. My husband tried to text me and I missed it. I saw my phone was ringing and I answered the phone. He was like, ‘Honey, I need to tell you they found Deziraye.’ I just screamed,” she said.
Immediately, Lockett called the sergeant in Nevada who was handling the case to ask when she could pick her up. A process had to be followed, including verifying custody with DCS. Lockett and her husband began their drive from Nevada on Jan. 24 and arrived in Brown County the afternoon of Jan. 26.
“I am so relieved,” she said. “I broke down crying. I went in and I grabbed her. I think she didn’t know what to do because I was overwhelmed. I was so happy to see her.”
The evening of Jan. 26, Lockett, her husband and Deziraye returned to the Law Enforcement Center to meet everyone involved with the arrest. The officers brought gifts and many photos were taken.
“I can’t express how happy I am to have my daughter back. It’s euphoric. I haven’t seen her, I haven’t heard her voice or anything in months. Her siblings are super excited,” Lockett said as tears filled her eyes.
“She’s going to be home.”
Lockett said she wants everyone to know that Eggers is not a bad person and he was not a random stranger who kidnapped her child. “I don’t want him portrayed as some weirdo,” she said.
“He is her father and he violated a custody order. He loves her more than anything in this world. I just wish he would have made a better choice.”
