An audio recording leaked to KPRC reveals Texas Sheriff Byron Lyons suggesting that his department “dropped the ball” in not arresting Don Steven McDougal last fall on an assault charge before he allegedly kidnapped and killed 11-year-old Audrii Cunningham this week.
McDougal, who lived in a trailer behind Cunningham’s father’s house, was arrested in the midst of the search for the girl and charged with stabbing David Stanley on August 19, 2023.
Audrii was found dead earlier this week tied by a rope to a heavy rock and dumped into the Trinity River, as CrimeOnline reported.
Stanley had initially identified a completely different person — from a Facebook photograph — as the man who stabbed him and changed his identification to McDougal nearly three weeks later when he saw the man he first accused in person.
The audio obtained by KPRC, recorded in late November, is of a meeting Polk County Sheriff Lyons had with Stanley’s girlfriend.
“We dropped the ball on this and we’re trying to find the ball to get it fixed,” Lyons says in the recording. “We didn’t do our job. … That’s, that’s why we’re here to talk about it. … We’re fixing it. We’re making it right.”
A new investigator was assigned the case within a day of that conversation, the station reported, citing a timeline of the investigation provided by the sheriff’s office. Stanley later said he wanted attempted murder charges filed against both McDougal and the man he initially said stabbed him because the first man “should have known.”
Stanley’s attorney, David Feldman, said it was still months before the sheriff’s office moved against McDougal, not until he was being questioned by Texas Rangers when he was picked up as a person of interest in Cunningham’s disappearance.
“This is a tragedy that should not have happened had law enforcement done their job the last few months,” Feldman said. “I don’t think you’d be talking to me about the disappearance of Audrii Cunningham.”
Chief Deputy Andy Lowrie told KPRC that “the sheriff is aggravated and feels like the ball had been dropped,” but he blamed Stanley.
“Stanley identified the wrong person who was arrested and put in jail,” Lowrie said. “Stanley did do the identification and even testified in court on a protective order that the wrong person he identified did the stabbing. It was not till later he came forward and admitted he identified the wrong person and people pushed him to identify the wrong person.”
Lowrie said the sheriff does feel responsible for the wrong person going to jail, however temporarily. “Sheriff does not agree with an innocent person going to jail for any reason,” he said.
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[Featured image: Audrii Cunningham/Polk County Sheriffs Office and Don Steven McDougal/Montgomery County Jail]
