Adoptive mother charged with homicide after missing Dunbar girl found dead in Yough River
A 9-year-old girl with special needs who was reported missing from her Dunbar home Wednesday was found dead in Westmoreland County, leading investigators to charge her adoptive mother with killing her.
The body of Renesmay Eutsey was found partially submerged in the Youghiogheny River near Smithton about 2 a.m. Thursday nearly 14 hours after state police were alerted to her disappearance, Fayette County District Attorney Michael Aubele said.
The child’s adoptive mother, Kourtney Malinda Eutsey, and the woman’s partner, Sarah Shipley, contacted state police shortly after noon Wednesday indicating the child had apparently wandered from their Third Street home in Dunbar Borough about 2 a.m. earlier that day.
Kourtney Eutsey
However, as investigators interviewed Eutsey and other children in the house about the girl’s disappearance, certain aspects of the stories did not coincide with evidence found at the scene, according to court documents.
Shipley told state police that she grounded the little girl Tuesday night and put her to bed, according to court documents. When Shipley was awakened by another child around noon Wednesday, she told investigators that Renesmay was missing, police said.
But the other children said they heard Renesmay “screaming and crying” in her room and saw Eutsey and Shipley allegedly kick the victim in the stomach, according to court documents. One of the children overheard Eutsey and Shipley say they were going to take the victim to a river “far far away,” police allege in charging documents. A child saw the victim inside a black garbage bag stuffed inside a tote bag as Eutsey left the house with it, according to police.
Surveillance video from the area showed a vehicle arriving shortly before 4 a.m. and a person going inside the house and coming out multiple times, police said. After a police interview, Eutsey led investigators to the location of Renesmay’s body in the Youghiogheny River in South Huntingdon Township about a mile south of Smithton, according to court documents.
“The information we were getting was not matching up with some of the things we were finding in surveillance (videos) and other investigative leads we had,” Aubele said. “We were eventually given the location of her body.”
Eutsey apparently told investigators that Renesmay had suffered a severe burn to her back while in the bathtub the week before, but the couple did not get her medical treatment and it had become infected. She claimed the child vomited and choked Tuesday night, causing her death, court documents indicate. Eutsey told investigators she panicked and “did not want to get into trouble due to the victim’s burn and how skinny she looked,” so she transported the body to the Smithton area and disposed of it along the shore of the river.
Aubele said investigators are not sure yet how Renesmay died, and an autopsy will be performed by the Westmoreland County coroner to determine the cause and manner of her death.
Shortly after Eutsey and Shipley alerted authorities to Renesmay’s disappearance Wednesday afternoon, police fanned out across the Dunbar area searching for her. Search and rescue teams were called to the scene, and a command center was set up in Dunbar Borough to coordinate the search effort.
Aubele said they were initially told that the child may have wandered from the house, but authorities began to question that story when a search of the nearby woods came up with no results. Aubele added the girl had developmental issues and was supposedly dressed in pajamas when the couple reported her missing.
“A child of that age and that development is going to be close. Maybe she had gotten out? Maybe she had run away? It just didn’t make sense,” Aubele said. “She’s 9 and she’s small for her age, and she has developmental disabilities. She was not going to leave the house that way.”
More evidence surfaced raising doubts about how Renesmay disappeared, Aubele said, and Eutsey eventually directed authorities to the child’s body as investigators continued to question her about the situation.
“While we had people looking for her, we were going through all of these (surveillance) cameras and doing interviews, and all of that stuff that led to (Eutsey) being charged,” he said.
Eutsey, 31, is charged with homicide, child endangerment, abuse of a corpse, evidence tampering, concealing the death of a child and two counts of aggravated assault. She was arraigned Thursday morning by District Judge Jason Cox, and she was taken to the Fayette County jail without bond. No one else had been charged as of Thursday morning, although Aubele said the investigation is ongoing.