After Her Baby Was Buried Alive, a South Carolina Mother Wonders Why

The detectives dug quickly but carefully, as the baby’s cries underneath the freshly packed dirt grew louder.

Koah Sharp, just shy of his first birthday, had been buried alive for about 24 hours in Lexington County, S.C., the authorities said, entombed in a dog crate wrapped with a dirt-smeared towel. Deputies unearthed the 11-month-old on Tuesday, amazed 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 make sense of what had happened to her boy as she caressed his plump baby cheeks again.

“I can’t believe it still,” Ms. Sharp said in the first interview she has granted since her child, who is expected to fully recover, went missing. “It’s something you would see in a movie. It’s something you would 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 go that far,” Ms. Sharp said.

‘I Want to Be a Family’

Koah’s disappearance and his remarkable survival have shocked people well beyond Lexington County, a booming manufacturing hub that is part suburbia, part rural and near the capital city of Columbia.