The mom of lacking nine-year-old Melodee Buzzard has been taken into custody after the kid’s physique was founds months after her disappearance, based on new reviews.
Ashlee Buzzard, of Lompoc, California, was taken into custody following the outcomes of a DNA check had been returned, ABC Information reported Tuesday.
Human stays had been present in early December in Utah in an space that it was identified the teen had traveled along with her mom. The outcomes have now confirmed the stays to belong to Melodee.
Santa Barbara Sheriff’s County Workplace have but to launch additional particulars. A press convention is scheduled to be held at 2 p.m. PT Monday.
Melodee was first reported lacking on October 14 when the Lompoc Unified College District reported her extended absence.
Deputies who went to the household’s house following the reviews of her disappearance stated they spoke with Ashlee Buzzard, however “no verifiable rationalization for [Melodee’s] whereabouts was supplied,” based on the sheriff’s workplace. Buzzard had not cooperated with the investigation, they added.
In early November the sheriff’s workplace introduced that they’d narrowed their investigation to the timeframe between October 9 and October 10, whereas the pair had been on a multi-state street journey to Nebraska which additionally included a number of stops in Utah.
They shared a map of the automobile’s stops alongside Buzzard’s route again to California, which they imagine took her by Inexperienced River, Utah; Panguitch, Utah; northwest Arizona; Primm, Nevada; and Rancho Cucamonga, California.
Surveillance photos shared by authorities additionally present Melodee, in what gave the impression to be a wig, alongside her mom at a Lompoc rental automotive firm on October 7. The final confirmed sighting of Melodee got here two days later, on October 9, close to the Colorado-Utah border.
Deputies revealed they believed that Buzzard eliminated the California plate 9MNG101 from the white 2024 Chevrolet Malibu rental automotive and changed it with a New York plate HCG9677 both on or earlier than October 8 so as “to keep away from detection.”
When she returned the automotive, the California plate was again in place. It’s unknown when the plate was put in or whether or not extra plates had been used at different occasions throughout journey.
When her mom returned house to California on October 10, Melodee was nowhere to be discovered.
Ashlee Buzzard was additionally arrested November 7 on a cost of false imprisonment is unrelated to the lacking individual investigation into her daughter.
Detectives stated in a press launch on the time that Buzzard had prevented a sufferer from leaving a location in opposition to their will.
