During this week, a teenager from South Carolina who had disappeared was discovered in a vacant house, where she was brutally beaten and stabbed. Law enforcement officials have detained two other teenagers in connection with her murder.
The Chief of Police in Columbia, Skip Holbrook, expressed his shock at the tragic death of Ka’Niyah Baker, a 13-year-old, during a press briefing on Saturday, using words like “brutal, heinous, vicious, gruesome, monstrous, and disturbing” to describe the incident.
Ka’Niyah was last seen on January 13, and the Richland County Sheriff’s Department had issued warnings, suspecting that she might be at risk, according to a report from WLTX. However, the girl remained unaccounted for until Wednesday evening, when firefighters in Columbia were called to a blaze at an abandoned home in the Capital Heights area and discovered the body of a female inside.
The victim had significant injuries to her face and body and had been severely burned, Holbrook said, and Coroner Naida Rutherford said that visual identification wasn’t possible because of the severity of her injuries. Finally, using DNA from dirty clothing at Baker’s foster home and dental records, they were able to positively identify the victim as the missing girl.
Rutherford said Baker had been “bludgeoned, stabbed, and burned.”
“The manner of death is not an accident, and this is not a suicide,” Rutherford said. “This is a horrible homicide.”
Holbrook said police have arrested a 15-year-old girl and a 16-year-old girl for the murder. Both had been reported missing on January 12, and Holbrook did not say when or how they were located.
Fifth Circuit Solicitor Byron Gipson said his office will pursue charging both suspects as adults.
Holbrook said that all three girls — the two suspects and the victim — were known to be frequent runaways. The 16-year-old girl was wanted by the Department of Juvenile Justice after allegedly cutting off her ankle monitor. Both suspects had been enrolled in school as recentaly as December but are now considered drop-outs.
Baker was originally from Sumter but was living in foster care in Columbia at the time of her death, Holbrook said.
