5-Year-Old Girl's Throat Slashed In 'Horrific Crime'

Posted: 7:45 pm PDT June 27, 2010
Updated: 7:31 am PDT June 28, 2010

LAKE CUSHMAN, Wash. -- Mason County sheriff’s deputies said a man is in custody in connection with the homicide of a girl whose throat was slashed with a kitchen knife.

Police said the 5-year-old girl was killed at a home near Lake Cushman, west of Hoodsport, Sunday. Deputies said the death was first reported as an accident.

Investigators said when deputies and medics arrived at the home in the 200 block of North Mount Seattle Way at 6:13 p.m., the girl was dead. Police said the child's mother and an older sibling were still inside the house, and a 29-year-old man who is either the girl's father or stepfather was in a gazebo outside the home when officers arrived.

That man is in custody in connection with the killing. He was booked into the Mason County Jail Sunday night.

Chief Deputy Dean Byrd said the girl was killed with a large kitchen knife.

"In my 37 years, this is probably the most horrific crime that I have been involved in. It's very sad for me, the department, and for the community at large. It's just a horrific crime, and it's so senseless,” Byrd told KIRO 7 Eyewitness News.

Byrd said the family was vacationing at the home and may have been visiting from British Columbia.

From: http://www.kirotv.com/news/24063821/detail.html?cxntlid=cmg_cntnt_rss