An Alabama woman was killed by her boyfriend of less than a year in her own home.
A man in Alabama has been charged with the murder of his girlfriend, who he had been dating for less than a year, and he will be tried in court.
After allegedly killing 25-year-old Madison Shea Pilkington inside her own apartment, Cortez Lenard Warren, 32, tried to clean up the crime scene, Al.com reports. Warren is charged with murder and tampering with physical evidence.
The body of the dead woman was found by a family member just after 4 a.m. on Saturday at her apartment in Hoover, Ala.
As a family member told the Hoover Police Department, Pilkington was “unresponsive.” Officers came to the scene at 4:10am, the police department said.
As soon as her family found out she had not been to work, they began to worry, police said in a press release on Sunday. “Hoover Fire Medics came and found the person dead.”
According to law enforcement, evidence found in the case at first suggested that Pilkington died because of a domestic assault. Now, police have said that she died from blunt force trauma.
“She was beautiful both inside and out,” the aunt of the dead woman, Dana Armstrong, told Al.com on Sunday. “Everyone who knew her loved her.” It’s been a huge surprise.
“We want people to keep us in their prayers,” the aunt of the girl who died said.
Armstrong also started a GoFundMe for the parents of her niece, who she hasn’t seen in years, to help pay for funeral and final costs.
Remember Pilkington? She did, too!
: My niece, Madison Shea Pilkington, has been given angel wings. She is so beautiful! The family needs help paying for the funeral and other costs, so I’m asking anyone who feels led to help. All of us have been hurt by this, so please pray for us. Thank you for all your prayers.
It didn’t take long for police to figure out that Warren was a suspect in the case. They put out a “be on the lookout” or BOLO alert for him. The defendant was said to be driving a white Nissan Altima, and he was almost as quickly caught as well. The arrest, on the other hand, did not go without a hitch.
Warren went through Irondale and Birmingham, then onto I-65 northbound with officers from a lot of different places behind him, including Hoover, Irondale, and Fultondale.
They were also pulling over on the shoulder of the interstate to try to stop. An officer’s SUV was hit from behind by 62-year-old New Orleans driver Julie Johnson. They were taken to UAB Hospital.
The officer had a concussion. He has been released and is getting better at home, where he can be with his family. Johnson didn’t have life-threatening injuries.
It says that Warren’s charging documents say that he has been accused of domestic abuse by another woman in the past, and that he has been charged again. Claims: She says she was choked by him, then thrown off the bed, and he pushed his hand into her mouth as she screamed.
Before this case, the defendant was also accused of breaking the woman’s phone so she could not call for help. As a result, the lesser tampering charge was dropped in that case, and a grand jury later decided not to file charges against the person for choking.
It costs Warren a total of $262,000 to bail him out of the Jefferson County Jail. He is charged with three crimes. This is how it worked: When police pulled him over, they also charged him with one minor drug offense.
