Wandering 5-year-old leads police to gruesome murder scene, New Jersey officials say
A welfare check after a 5-year-old girl was found wandering outside her apartment led police to the girl’s dead mother, according to police and media reports.
A 911 call was placed around 12:20 a.m. Tuesday when a neighbor observed the 5-year-old “wandering through the courtyard” of a Dumont, New Jersey, home, the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office said.
The woman who lived in the complex, 36-year-old Michelle Burns, was not answering phone calls from her sister, according to WABC. The sister said she heard arguing earlier in the evening between Burns and her boyfriend, Jeffrey Daniels, WABC reported.
Daniels knocked on the sister’s door holding his and Burns’ 6-month-old daughter and 18-month-old daughter and asked her for a ride, WABC and the Daily Voice reported.
When officials entered Burns’ apartment for a welfare check, they found the mother dead, according to the prosecutor’s office. “She had been stabbed in the neck with a kitchen knife,” the prosecutor said.
Police told WABC “there were no signs the victim put up a fight.”
Officers were notified that Daniels was found in neighboring Closter knocking on the door of another residence, according to the prosecutor.
He was taken into custody Tuesday and charged with first-degree murder, one count of endangering the welfare of a child and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, the prosecutor said.
Daniels was not “wearing pants or shoes” when he knocked on the door of the second residence, according to the Daily Voice.
The infant children were taken to an area hospital “awaiting response from the state Department of Children and Families,” while the 5-year-old girl was with family, the Daily Voice reported.
Daniels was placed in the Bergen County Jail, the prosecutor said.
A childhood friend told NorthJersey.com she set up a GoFundMe page Tuesday to help pay for funeral expenses and support Burns’ three children.
“It’s a tragedy for her kids, who have no parents now. Just terrible,” Nicole Kochansky told the publication. “For somebody to do something like this — I can’t imagine what was going through this guy’s head.”
More than $12,000 has been raised in the GoFundMe in less than 24 hours as of Wednesday morning.
This story was originally published June 17, 2020 at 9:10 AM with the headline "Wandering 5-year-old leads police to gruesome murder scene, New Jersey officials say."