'Loss Is Hard': Macomb District Grieves Kindergarten Teacher's Aide

A body wrapped in a carpet and discovered near Oklahoma Highway 59B and Hamilton Road in Macomb earlier this week has officially been identified as previously missing 30-year-old, Makayla Meave-Byers.

According to the Pottawatomie County Sheriff's office, Byers was last seen Sept. 15, and was found Wednesday night in a rural area of the county along Hamilton Road off Oklahoma Highway 59A.

Undersheriff Travis Dinwiddie says the location of the body, and the fact it was wrapped in carpet, points to foul play.

“It was definitely placed there by someone. It couldn't just end up there on its own,” Dinwiddie said. “The information we were given is that she had left to go on a date and never returned home."

Investigators say Meave-Byers, a mother and teacher with the Macomb Public School District, never came home and on Saturday, deputies searched the area around her home.

“We spent all night out there checking the area and searching the area trying to locate her,” Dinwiddie said. “We brought out drones with infrared to check the area. We brought out search dogs to check just to make sure she hadn't maybe walked off into the woods and gotten lost.”

Byers worked for Macomb Public Schools as a kindergarten teacher's aide. The superintendent for the district said news of her death has sent a ripple of emotions through the 40-person district staff.

"This is so unprecedented. I mean this is not something that you deal with a lot," Superintendent Matt Riggs said. "For a school like ours that is so small, losing a coworker with the circumstances surrounding it as far as her age and all that. Loss is hard, but when you put a variable in that is so different, that makes it even harder.”

Riggs said Byers' family is privately taking the time and space they need to process her death. But he said the district guarantees its full support to the family during its grief.

The Pottawatomie County Sheriff's Office did not provide any other details related to the investigation. Previously, the office said they believe foul-play was involved. Investigators have not shared if they are looking for or have identified any suspects or persons of interest in the case.

But Riggs said it's the people who saw her every day that are hurting the most.

"We had counselors on site and made them available and covered their classes," he said. "Did whatever we needed to do to be able to visit with them."

Macomb Public Schools released a statement to its families, which was also posted to its Facebook page. In part, it shares ways parents can identity signs of grief in children and how to talk about what's happened in their families.

https://www.facebook.com/MacombSchool/posts/pfbid02p9JKU75rKtc91D1FsFM8BZ21V8mNXL7aNjJX8H5U1pVL1JrF5kVwWXGQSFdcGmfRl