Prosecutors charged a man with murder Monday in the slayings of his teenage girlfriend and her aunt, both of whom were shot, and of two children whose throats were slashed.
The bodies were found in a Jeep in an abandoned lot. Police said a “domestic situation” led to the carnage.
Luther T. Jenkins, 25, was ordered held without bond in the deaths. If convicted, he faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole.
Police began looking for the four victims Saturday after a friend went to their house, suspected something was wrong, and called police. The 1-year-old daughter of Jenkins and 17-year-old Gloria Pitts was found unharmed in a closet.
Police found the Jeep on Sunday morning in the abandoned lot strewn with tires and debris. The vehicle contained Pitts’ body, and those of Alicia Jackson, 24, and her two children, Jamon Wilmer, 7, and I’jannia Jackson, 4.
“He took my family. He took my babies. He took my wife,” Jackson’s husband, Ronald, told WDIV-TV. Relatives say Jamon Wilmer was Ronald Jackson’s stepson.
Police spokesman James Tate said physical evidence and a statement from the Jenkins “lead us to understand that it is the result of a domestic situation.”
Pitts was trying to finish high school in hopes of having a career.
“She just wanted God to let her be somebody,” Alethea Stewart said, tears streaming down her cheeks, adding her daughter ignored pleas to stop seeing Jenkins. “My daughter loved him very much.”