Boy 10, found in mom's trash wearing Spider-Man pants likely 'accidentally' shot himself

Police are struggling to work out who killed a 10-year-old boy who was found shot dead in a plastic garbage can at his mother's home in Illinois, seven months after going missing.

Zion Staples was dressed only in his Spiderman pants in the when his body was discovered in the garage of the four-bedroom house in Rock Island on July 26.

A neighbor had grown alarmed and tipped off social services after mother, Sushi Staples, 38, told her that her son would not be around for Christmas any more.

And she told police she had 'no son at all' when they arrived at the home where they found dryer sheets stuffed 'in every vent of the house' in an apparent bid to mask the smell and the boy's body with a gunshot wound to his head.

Rock Island coroner Brian Gustafson said the boy appeared to have been dead since Deecember.

'Do I know who shot him? No,' he told USA Today.

'I don't believe we will ever know at this point who shot him, but the case is still an active and open investigation.'

Rock Island Police Department Detective Jonathan Shappard said two of Staples' other children living in the home told investigators that Zion had been 'playing with a handgun and accidentally shot himself'.

At a preliminary hearing he said the mother had originally hidden the boy's body in a plastic bin in the basement after he died around December 21.

He told the court that Staples admitted moving the body to the home's garage because 'she didn't want her other four children to locate him in the basement', and put up dryer sheets to disguise the odor.

One neighbor told Law and Crime she made repeated calls to Illinois' Department of Children and Family Services over a period of months after the boy disappeared.

Others have demanded to know how a child could disappear for so long without the authorities knowing.

'I had a dead raccoon in my backyard, and we put it in a garbage bag and then put it in a garbage can, and I couldn't even stand the smell waiting for garbage day,' one told ABC6.

'So I can't imagine, that with the wind directions, that nobody would smell that.'

Others said the family appeared to be a 'normal, Christian family'.

'We saw two girls, you know, coming sometimes, like out in the yard,' said Andre and Danielle Builta.

'I saw them drawing with chalk in the back driveway. And with scooters out front of the garage, everything seemed really normal.

'They would wave when they saw us. And so we were like, Oh, they seem pretty friendly actually, for neighbors.'

'It's a little weird, because all knowing that all the time that we've been here, working on the house, and knowing her, knowing what was in the garage, literally like, what, like 30 feet from the house that we've moved into, it's a little bit worrying, kind of scary, but, um, it was it was quite a surprise.

'I wasn't expecting that at all.'

Heather Tarczan, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, called Zion's' death a 'profound tragedy', and said that the family's children were home-schooled.

DFCS does not have any jurisdiction over that, so we would not, of course, have any knowledge of any misdeeds taking place if students or children were, in fact, missing,' she added. 

'When DCFS receives concerns about a child's welfare that do not meet our statutory purview for an investigation, we refer the reporter of that case to local law enforcement,' she added.

'In this case, when an anonymous reporter called the DCFS hot line in July 2023 and requested a well-being check of a child, that caller was told what our capabilities as an agency are and was encouraged to report their concerns to local law enforcement.

'Out of genuine concern and based on what the caller reported, the DCFS hot line worker also made a call directly to law enforcement to ensure that a report was filed.'

Final autopsy results are still pending in the case and Staples has been charged with four felonies, including concealment of a body, obstruction of justice and failure to report the death of a child.

She is being held on $500,000 bail at the Rock Island County Jail ahead of a pretrial hearing on November 27.