Multiple local news reports show a 25-year-old mother of two is dead in Pennsylvania where authorities have detained her boyfriend — who allegedly confessed to her fatal stabbing but claimed it was in self-defense.
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, police were summoned to an apartment in Chester, Pennsylvania, on Friday night after receiving a domestic disturbance call. They arrived to find the 6-year-old daughter of the victim, identified as Devanna Cornitcher.
“He killed my mommy,” her daughter, who was with neighbors, allegedly told police, the Inquirer reports. (Chester police did not return PEOPLE’s requests for comment.)
Officers approached the door to Cornitcher’s apartment and found it locked, according to both the Inquirer and the Delaware County Daily Times. The papers cite an affidavit against 25-year-old Alonzo Carter, Cornitcher’s boyfriend and her suspected killer.
Police saw blood on the walls and stairs leading to the second floor of the building and inside Cornitcher’s residence, they could hear a child crying. It was Cornitcher’s 3-year-old son, next to his slain mother’s body, local TV station KYW reports. Next to her body was a blood-stained knife; all around was blood.
Not far away police say they found Carter, sitting against a wall, covered in blood and smoking a cigarette, according to the Inquirer, which also spoke to neighbors who said Cornitcher and Carter had been dating for a few months before the stabbing.
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KYW reports that Carter is the father of Cornitcher’s younger son.
The affidavit in the case states that he allegedly told police he killed Cornitcher “’cause she tried to stab me,” according to the Daily Times.
Authorities believe otherwise and Carter was soon taken into custody.
He is being held without bail on charges of first- and third-degree murder, possession of an instrument of crime, and reckless endangerment.
It was unclear if Carter has retained an attorney who could comment on his behalf. He has not pleaded to his charges.
Cornitcher’s children, who are now reportedly staying with a relative, were not harmed during the altercation.
