Two teenage girls in South Carolina have been charged in the “vicious” murder of a 13-year-old girl who was found bludgeoned, stabbed, and burned in a vacant house fire.
Ka’Niyah Baker, 13, who was reported missing on January 13, was found two days later after the house fire on Cardamon Court, about 20 miles away from where she was last seen, according to Columbia police.
Columbia Police Chief “Skip” Holbrook said at a news conference on Saturday that Ka’Niyah “suffered traumatic injuries to her face and body and had been severely burned,” describing her murder as “heinous.”
The fire department responded after smoke was seen billowing from the house. Once inside, they found the teen’s body on the floor. There was no identification for the teen and police were not able to immediately identify her until the next day.
“The young woman’s description matched a few other women who were reported as runaways or missing,” Richland County Coroner Naida Rutherford said on Saturday.
Ka’Niyah Baker, 13, who was reported missing on January 13, was found two days later after a fire at a vacant home (Columbia Police Department)
“So, the reason that the flyer went out for a missing teen, even though this person already deceased, was in the hopes that she was still alive and this was not her.”
Holbrook said police “worked with the Richland County Sheriff’s Department, DNA lab and the coroner’s office to ultimately determine that our victim was their missing juvenile.”
Rutherford confirmed that the teen’s cause of death was blunt force trauma and that she had been “bludgeoned, stabbed and burned.”
“The manner of death was not an accident, and this was not a suicide,” Rutherford added. “This is a horrible homicide.”
The two teen girls, ages 15 and 16, who were arrested in the victim’s death had dropped out of a high school in Columbia and were frequent runaways, Holbrook said. It’s not clear if the teens and the victim knew each other.
He said that one of the teens was wanted by the South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice after cutting off her ankle monitor. She had been reported “missing” by her mother on January 12.
The solicitor’s office is expected to petition the family court and ask to charge these two juveniles as adults, Fifth Circuit Solicitor Byron Gipson said in Saturday’s press conference, saying: “We expect to pursue justice in this matter.”
Holbrook said more details are expected to come out and pointed to the lack of parents in teens’ lives – which he said is a common theme among the “senseless violence” happening in Columbia.
“This is gut-wrenching,” Holbrook said. “When you talk to people that have been involved in committing heinous crimes like this, you’re looking to seek answers and read their reactions. But sometimes it’s when there is no reaction, that’s what’s most troubling. This shocks the conscious to me.”
“We’ve got some work to do with our system,” Holbrook added. “We’ve got some work to do with our young people. There’s too much despair. And we’ve got to change that.”
