Missouri duo brutally beat 4-year-old girl, submerged her in a freezing pond and left her to die on the banks
BENTON COUNTY, MISSOURI: A man and a woman have been arrested for allegedly beating a young girl severely before submerging her into a freezing pond and leaving her to die on the banks. The alleged incident happened on Sunday, December 20, when the four-year-old victim -- whose name has not been released -- was left to die by Ethan Mast and Kourtney Aumen in the pond. The Benton County Sheriff’s Office received a 911 call in the early morning which claimed that the child was dead. As reported by The Sun, James Mast, 28, father of the little girl told officers that his daughter “had been beaten, submerged in a pond, then left to freeze on the bank”. Investigators said that the victim’s 28-year-old mother, Mary Mast, and a two-year-old boy were also brutally beaten. But both of them are alive and receiving treatment at a local hospital.
The 35-year-old Ethan along with the 21-year-old Aumen was arrested at a home near the victim family's. Though Ethan shares the last name with the traumatized family, it’s still not clear if they are related to each other. Also, the relationship between him and Aumen is not known yet. Both the accused have been detained on a 24-hour hold and will probably face several felony charges, officers said, who added that more arrests can be made in connection with the alleged crime.
In another incident, a mother from Texas was given twenty years of jail after she threw “her toddler's dead body in a lake and carried around a life-size doll wearing the two-year-old's clothes". Tiaundra Christon was awarded two decades behind bars on December 14 for murdering her two-year-old daughter Hazana Anderson in 2018. The 23-year-old was also ordered to pay $10,000 as a fine. It has been said that the killer mother traveled with the toddler from College Station to Houston to meet her boyfriend, co-defendant Kenny Hewett, two years back. Galveston County Criminal District Attorney Jack Roady said that the pair along with the victim stayed at the Downtowner Inns and Suites hotel.
When Christon came back from Houston, she was seen carrying a child and her friends believed that she was her daughter. Wal-Mart video surveillance also captured her with the toddler. However, when the felon called 911 on October 28, 2018, claiming Anderson was missing from Gabbard Park, it led to a massive search and rescue operation. But it did not take much time for the search operator to turn into a criminal investigation when cops from College Station discovered a life-sized doll wearing the same clothes which the little girl was wearing when she vanished in a garbage can across the street from where Christon parked her car. Eventually, it was found that the mother brought the doll with her to fake it as her baby after she and Hewett sexually abused her that resulted in her death. And to hide her body, they dumped Anderson’s remains at Moses Lake in Texas City. On 31, 2018, police found the girl’s body about 140 miles away from Gabbard park. Though Christon pleaded not guilty to the charges pressed against her, a jury declared her guilty. She reportedly has to serve at least 15 percent of her sentence before being eligible for parole.