A Florida woman was arrested on Sunday after she was spotted pulling the dead body of her 11-year-old daughter out of her crashed vehicle.
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Erica Newsome, 37, drove for two days with her daughter’s body in her truck before she crashed into a guard rail in West Virginia. She was then seen pulling the body out of the vehicle and dragging it into the woods by two other motorists. After the pair called the police, authorities located Newsome on a nearby hillside with the body of Kaye-lea Plummer next to her.
“It was obvious that the 11-year-old did not die from injuries from the accident,” State Police Sgt. Herby Barlow said after a coroner concluded that the girl had been dead for at least 24 hours. “Her injuries were non-motor vehicle injuries.”
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Newsome reportedly told police that her daughter did not move, eat, drink or use the bathroom during their trip, the destination of which was the girl’s father’s house in Buffalo, New York. Kaye-lea’s father Donath Plummer believes his estranged wife, “the only person I trusted with my child,” had “snapped.”
“I can’t even wrap my head around what even would have made (my wife) snap,” Plummer said. “That’s exactly what that mugshot looked like. Something pushed her over the edge and she snapped.”
He added that Newsome was a “great mother” and that “something is very, very wrong.” Additionally, the former couple’s daughter had no previous contact with the child welfare system. Newsome was arrested on charges of concealing a body and is being held on $50,000 bail while investigators search the Florida home in which they believe Kaye-lea died.
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