An arrest warrant on charges of second-degree murder and aggravated child abuse has been issued against the 37-year-old Jacksonville woman arrested Aug. 6 in West Virginia after police found her 11-year-old daughter’s body near her crashed truck on a West Virginia highway, according to the State Attorney’s Office.
The Jan. 10 warrant seeks the return of Erica T. Newsome, currently in the Southern Regional Jail in Pocahontas County in West Virginia on a charge of concealment of a deceased human body, on the elevated Jacksonville charges. It also details the multiple injuries found on Kaye-lea Plummer’s body, some new and others in “various stages of healing.”
The West Virginia’s medical examiner said she had injuries on her head, torso and extremities that were “determined to be due to assault,” contributing to her death, according to the warrant. There also was evidence of strangulation and/or suffocation, and the child was so skinny she showed signs of malnutrition.
Newsome’s truck hit a guardrail early Aug. 6 on U.S. 250 in Thornwood, a mile and a half west of the state line, according to West Virginia State Police. The warrant said Newsome’s truck crashed when a front tire came off, and state troopers found her standing next to her daughter’s body at the bottom of an embankment 150 yards away.
Kaye-lea’s body was under a blanket, and an initial examination showed she had been “deceased prior to the crash,” authorities said in August. State Police said a couple who were on the same highway reported seeing Newsome remove a body wrapped in a blanket from the truck and drag it over the hill after the 11:20 a.m. crash.
Police determined the child’s death occurred in Jacksonville. Newsome told police her daughter did not move for two days as they drove to Buffalo, N.Y., according to The Pocohantas Times.
The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office did check Newsome’s Jake Road home as part of its investigation and found evidence of the crime there.
Click here to read the Florida Times-Union article.
Newsome’s cellphone also included disturbing internet searches before she left on Aug. 4 for Buffalo, N.Y., where Kaye-lea’s father lives. Those included research on “alligator ponds,” “fatal bridge accidents in Jacksonville,” “people killed on Virginia cliffs” and “Virginia highways that has huge cliffs,” the warrant said.