California megachurch elder, grandparents charged with murder and torture of 11-year-old adoptive daughter
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SPRING VALLEY, SAN DIEGO: A septuagenarian couple along with their daughter, a California megachurch elder accused of killing an 11-year-old girl, Arabella McCormack from Spring Valley on August 30, has pleaded not guilty even for the charges of abuse and torture.
Leticia McCormack, 49, and her parents, Adella, 75, and Stanley Tom, 70 as per the prosecutors have been inflicting a great deal of torture and abuse on three girls for over five years now resulting in the death of Arabella.
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"She had signs of abuse," said the deputies who responded to a distress call at around 2 am at Lakeview Drive, as per San Diego Union-Tribune. The 11-year-old died in the hospital later. The Sheriff's department, report said that deputies who had called her adoptive father, Brian McCormack, the Snow Petrol veteran on reaching the scene in a pickup killed himself in front of them.
In addition to the charges of abuse and torture, McCormack and her father face a murder charge. If convicted, they face up to 25 years in prison and two additional life sentences.
McCormack and Brian were foster parents of Aarabella along with her siblings aged 6 and 7 in 2017, two years back the couple had adopted them. The siblings have managed to survive but with "acute malnutrition," and have been placed in a foster home now. The girls were pulled out of the school soon after adoption and were being homeschooled, the biological mother, Torriana Florey told the outlet.
Florey said she lost custody of her girls to Child Protective Services because of a “domestic violence dispute” with their father, while she also dealt with bipolar disorder. “I couldn’t be the mom the courts wanted me to be, because I was learning. Aarabella was my first daughter,” she said. Florey also mentioned that her first girl Arabella was "a beautiful, bubbly, and loving child". Florey stated that she intends to go to court to challenge Aarabella's sisters' adoptions and gain custody and expressed her desire to be able to lay Arabella to rest.
Leticia McCormack and her parents were detained on Monday and are still being held without bail. Leticia taught 'Kingdom Life Encounter' courses about modeling one's life after Jesus at the Rock Church in San Diego, which was founded by former NFL player Miles McPherson, who is the pastor. The church announced that it has severed ties with McCormack, who had been a volunteer for more than a decade, the Daily Mail reported.