A desperate search for a missing child ended with a heartbreaking discovery early Thursday when investigators pulled the body of nine-year-old Renesmay Eutsey from a Pennsylvania river, authorities said.
Hours later, her adoptive mother, 31-year-old Kourtney Malinda Eutsey, was taken into custody and charged with criminal homicide, aggravated assault, endangering the welfare of children, abuse of a corpse, tampering with evidence, and concealing the death of a child.
Renesmay, who had special needs, was reported missing from her Dunbar home Wednesday afternoon.
By 2 a.m. Thursday, troopers found her body partially submerged along the riverbank of the Youghiogheny River near Smithton, nearly 14 hours after the initial call.
The child’s cause of death has not yet been released, but Fayette County District Attorney Michael Aubele said it was clear that Renesmay had been abused, adding that she looked malnourished and had several bruises and cigarette burns on her body.
“It’s very apparent that this girl suffered,” Aubele said.
He also revealed that Eutsey had misled investigators and withheld information while they searched for her daughter.
“It is very frustrating,” Aubele said, according to WPXI. “We had a lot of search teams out. We had a lot of people looking for this girl. A lot of false hope.”
Eutsey and her partner told police Wednesday that the child had wandered away from their home on Third Street around 2 a.m., according to court documents obtained by The Observer–Reporter. But as state troopers questioned the couple and other children in the house, their accounts began to unravel.
The partner allegedly told police that she grounded Renesmay Tuesday night and last saw her when she went to bed.
But a child in the house told investigators they heard Renesmay “screaming and crying” in her room before allegedly witnessing Eutsey and her partner kick her in the stomach, according to court documents.
A child also claimed they overheard the women say they were going to take Renesmay to a river “far far away” and saw the girl being stuffed inside a black garbage bag, then into a tote bag, before Eutsey left the house.
One of the children apologized for not telling the truth earlier and said, “I’m never going to see my baby sister again because she’s in heaven.”
Investigators reviewing surveillance footage spotted a vehicle arriving at the home shortly before 4 a.m. Wednesday, with someone going in and out multiple times.
“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.”
When investigators questioned Eutsey, she told them Renesmay had burned herself in the bathtub about a week earlier but was never taken to a doctor. She claimed the girl vomited and choked Tuesday night, but despite attempts at CPR, had died.
Eutsey admitted she panicked because she “did not want to get into trouble due to the victim’s burn and how skinny she looked,” according to court documents. She then told investigators that she took the child’s body to the river to dispose of it.
An autopsy by the Westmoreland County coroner will confirm how Renesmay died.
Children & Youth Services has removed the other children from the home.
Eutsey was arraigned on Thursday and ordered held in Fayette County Prison without bond because she is considered a “threat to self and others,” according to court documents.
No one else has been charged, but authorities say the investigation is ongoing.
