He quit cooperating with investigators and has lied about Lonzie Barton’s disappearance.

“He’s where our attention is going to be focused”, Hackney said.

Ivey added he personally was providing executive oversight on the case, since Sheriff Williams is “currently out of town on an pre-planned trip”.

On Friday night, Ebron was charged with two counts of child neglect and booked in the Duval County Jail. He had his first court appearance Saturday.

Hackney said the boy’s mother and father have been cooperative and he does not believe they were involved in Lonzie’s disappearance. But Hackney says they don’t have concrete information from her because she’s so young.

According to the arrest warrant, Ebron was not supposed to be out past 7 p.m., and was not supposed to have contact with the co-defendants from his drug case.

William Ebron Jr., 32, told investigators that Lonzie Barton was kidnapped while he left the boy and his sister in the auto to grab something from his Jacksonville apartment early Friday.

He said someone stole the vehicle with the child inside.

While he was inside, the five-year-old girl came back into the apartment and told him “she was scared”, so he ran back outside to check on Barton.

It has become clear was that Ebron’s vehicle was never stolen, Hackney said.

An arrest warrant was also issued for Ebron on Friday.

The distinctive orange-and-black 1999 Honda Civic that Ebron said Lonzie was taken in was discovered just four blocks away about 20 minutes later, and Lonzie was nowhere to be found.

Chief Tom Hackney said they are searching nearby areas because it’s possible the 19-month-old boy could have also left the auto before it was taken.

Hackney said the case is still being worked as a child abduction. “I can’t say at this point and time whether Lonzie is alive or dead”.

The search efforts encompass a few miles out from the area of the apartment and where the auto was found, JSO said. That reality hung over the almost 200 searchers like the sweltering humidity and swarms of bugs as they methodically scoured numerous retention ponds and other possible sites in neighborhoods along Philips Highway near Interstate 295 south of the Avenues Mall. Hackney is asking all neighbors in the are of the disappearance to search every nook and cranny where a 21-month-old could hide.