Tot's death an accident

The Daily Inter Lake

'This was a just a sad, tragic event'

The death of 3-year-old Loic Rogers of Kalispell has been ruled an accident.

On Tuesday, Flathead County Sheriff Mike Meehan announced the completion of an investigation into last month's drowning death of the boy in an Evergreen septic tank.

"This was a just a sad, tragic event," Meehan said. "It's definitely not homicide. It wasn't intentional."

Meehan said his office left "no stone unturned" during the week-and-a-half investigation.

The boy was reported missing the night of Jan. 24 when he, his father and a sibling were visiting a friend in Evergreen. Loic's father, Mark Rogers, said he took the boy outside to his vehicle, told him to get in and then returned to the house for Loic's siblings.

When Mark Rogers returned, however, Loic was gone.

A search was launched that night and intensified during the next two days, with as many as 200 people turning out in a community effort to find the boy.

His body was found the night of Jan. 26 in the septic tank that was barely 10 feet away from where he disappeared.

An autopsy showed that he had drowned.

The tank had been checked during the first night of searching, but searchers did not see anything. The boy's body wasn't discovered until the tank was drained.

Meehan said the Sheriff's Office investigation included "extensive interviews with everyone involved."

He said some people took polygraph tests administered by the FBI, but the results would not be made public. Meehan would not discuss details of the investigation, such as how the lid ended up back on the septic tank after the child fell in.

The sheriff turned the investigation report over to County Attorney Ed Corrigan's office for review. Corrigan said Tuesday that he would meet with Loic's parents, Mark and Ariel Rogers, on the investigation conclusions and what his office planned to do next.

He said his office would wrap up a review of the case in about a week and a half and decide whether criminal charges were warranted in connection with the accident.