A 28-year-old Cleveland woman has been arrested in connection with the deaths of two Black girls found inside suitcases and buried in shallow graves, police said Thursday.
Aliyah Henderson was charged with two counts of aggravated murder and is being held at the Cuyahoga County Jail, records show. A spokesperson for Cleveland police said Henderson was the girls' mother.
She was booked Wednesday, two days after the girls’ remains were found near her home on the east side of Cleveland.
The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the dead girls as Amor Wilson, 10, and Mila Chatman, 8, both of Cleveland.
The ME's office did not reveal the cause of death.
“These were two young lives with their entire futures ahead of them,” Police Chief Dorothy Todd said in a news release before the suspect was formally charged. “Our detectives worked tirelessly and with great care to identify those responsible.”
Mayor Justin Bibb also trumpeted the arrest in a case that drew national attention.
“I want to thank our homicide detectives and members of the Division of Police for their incredible work in this case,” he said in a statement. “Their dedication and persistence led to a quick arrest in connection with the tragic deaths of two young children whose bodies were discovered earlier this week.”
Bibb said the grim discovery “has shocked our community.”
“We love and protect our young people, and the loss of these two children is unimaginable,” he said.
Todd said in her release that another child was found when police searched the suspect’s home “and appeared to be in good health.”
The Department of Children and Family Services has taken custody of the child. Todd provided no other information about that child.
The girls were found Monday evening by a dog walker who stumbled across the first body in the vicinity of East 162nd Street and Midland Avenue, near an all-boys public school called the Ginn Academy.
As they were searching the area, Cleveland homicide detectives found a second shallow grave with a suitcase that contained another body.
While police have not determined how long the girls had been buried at that location, the man whose dog sniffed them out told a local television station that the mound of dirt under which one of the bodies was found had been there at least a week.
