Missing Quinton Simon’s prime suspect mother cries about ‘devastating harassment’

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The mother of Quinton Simon, a 20-month-old boy from Georgia who has been missing for nearly three weeks, says she’s “not hiding,” even as police consider her the prime suspect in the child’s disappearance.

“I’m here. I’ve been here every day since this. I’m not running and I’m not hiding,” Leilani Simon told WTOC. “And if something does come up that I am at fault, I will take myself to that police station.”

Local police in Chatham County and the FBI are actively searching a nearby landfill, where they believe they will find the child’s remains.

Ever since Simon went missing, she says she’s been the target of constant harassment.

“It makes it hard to even process what’s going around us. We get to the point where we have to barricade our own home in order to even feel safe in our backyard because we can’t even process what is happening everywhere else, or even have the time to do so. I can’t even walk out and appreciate my own son’s memorial or put down gifts that I got for him. I can’t even go out there and do that without harassment and negligence and everything. It’s just devastating to see that this is how the outside world reacts,” she continued in her interview with WTOC.

Four demonstrators were arrested over the weekend over the weekend for blocking her driveway.

People have also left signs calling her a “Baby Killer” on the boy’s memorial.

The family says they’ve also installed security cameras, flood lights, and moved Quinton’s memorial in response to the unwanted public attention around the disappearance.

Elsewhere in her WTOC interview, Ms Simon said she hopes Quinton is found “happy and alive” - despite police saying they firmly believe the boy is deceased.

No charges have been filed against Ms Simon, and Chatham County Police have said they don’t consider her a flight risk.

Police have been searching a county landfill last week looking for Quinton’s body.

“We know that this is going to be a physically, mentally and emotionally gruelling task for our investigators and team,” Chatham County Police Chief Jeff Hadley said during a press briefing announcing the landfill search on Tuesday. “We want justice for Quinton just like everyone else.”

Quinton was reported missing on 5 October.

His mother made the 911 call reporting that she had woken up to find her son was gone and that she believed “someone came in and took him”, WJCL reported.

Ms Simon has two other children who have since been removed from the home.