Ohio officials said on Tuesday that a 13-year-old girl who was found dead on Monday was killed — prompting murder charges against her father.
According to KTOL, Lucas County coroners said Kei’mani Latigue died from multiple incised wounds of the neck. Keimani Latigue vanished from her Toledo home on March 17, a week before she was found dead on the second floor of a burned-out home.
Latigue was weeks from her 14th birthday.
READ: Body Found in Burned-Out Home Amid Search for 13-Year-Old Girl
“This is one of the most horrific cases I’ve ever heard of,” FOP official Brian Steel said, per WTTG.
“This is a 14-year-old who was murdered, raped, had her hands cut off, and her throat almost cut off.”
On Monday — the same day Latigue’s body was discovered — an arrest warrant was issued for her father, Darnell Jones, 33, for child abduction. He is now charged with murder, felonious assault, and third-degree felony abduction.
On Tuesday, Columbus police said there was a SWAT standoff involving Jones, who was shot but is expected to survive. No officers were injured.
Reports indicated that Latigue lived with her grandmother for the past five years. The grandmother reported Latigue missing on March 18, a day after she came home and found the house in disarray.
Jones told WTVG last week that he last saw Latigue on Sunday, March 16, after she called and said she was afraid to be home alone. However, police said Jones provided inconsistent accounts of his correspondence with his daughter or her whereabouts.
“He dropped her off at my mother’s house at 10 o’clock Monday night, and around 11:30 she called him and said that she thought that someone was trying to break into the house,” Latigue’s mother, who lives in Cleveland, told The Toledo Blade. “He said he came back. He stayed with her until she said that she felt OK. He had to go back home because he has a newborn, and he left early Tuesday morning.”
As of Tuesday, a motive has not been disclosed.
This story is developing…
[Feature Photo: Shutterstock]
