Amanda Carmack Indiana stepmother charged in strangling death of ten year old Gas City stepdaughter, Skylea Carmack after missing girl’s body found.
An Indiana woman has been arrested after allegedly strangling her 10 year old stepdaughter to death. The woman’s arrest follows the stepmother saying the girl had run away during search efforts for the missing girl. In truth- she was already dead investigators say.
Amanda D. Carmack, 34, is accused of having choked Skylea Rayn Carmack to death before hiding her body in the family’s Gas City home shed.
Indiana State Police say that the woman faces preliminary charges of murder and other crimes, the Indy Star reports.
‘In law enforcement, our main focus is who and how, not why,’ ISP Sargent Tony Slocum said during a Wednesday press conference. ‘Trying to rationalize why someone would kill a 10-year-old? There’s no rationale for that. That’s just an act of cowardice.’
The girl’s body was found in a trash bag in the shed at approximately 3am on Wednesday, Slocum added.
She was strangled to death between 4.30pm and 6pm on August 31, State Police said.
Carmack has been booked on preliminary charges of murder, neglect, strangulation and domestic battery, according to online records. She was booked into the Grant County Jail on Wednesday at 4.50am.
*RIP Skylea Carmack. Her body was found in a shed behind her family’s home in Gas City, Indiana 4 days after she was reported missing. Amanda Carmack, Skylea’s stepmother, was arrested in connection with her death* https://t.co/mgnA378riG
— Missing Persons Planet (@Home4theMissing) September 5, 2019
‘Someone has to know something.’
The arrest follows authorities issuing a statewide Silver Alert on Monday for Skylea Carmack, saying the child may require medical assistance.
Gas City Police said Skylea was last seen around 4pm Saturday in the 200 block of East South D Street in the north-central Indiana town, which sits about 64 miles northeast of Indianapolis.
Police said the child stood five feet tall and weighed 100lbs. She was last seen wearing a black shirt with the Nintendo video game characters Mario and Luigi on it along with black pants with a red pattern and teal high top tennis shoes.
‘If you believe you have seen or have any information regarding Skylea please contact the Gas City Police Department at 765-674-2278,’ the police department wrote on its Facebook page on Monday.
Local officers and volunteers went door-to-door passing out Missing Person flyers and organized volunteer search parties that failed to find the girl Monday afternoon.
‘We haven’t learned a whole lot more than we’ve known from the get go, and that’s the scary part,’ Gas City Police Sgt. Micah Burdette told Fort Wayne’s NBC.
Skylea’s biological mother, who goes by Staycee Smith and Staycee Brandenburg took to social media where she expressed her frustration with the lack of results from initial searches while they were ongoing.
‘Someone has to know something,’ she commented on a local news outlet’s Facebook post about the search for Skylea. ‘I feel useless like a sitting duck [not] doing enough to help find my baby.’
Skylea’s dad, Kevin Carmack at the time told reporters he was holding out hope that the girl was unharmed.
‘We haven’t been able to find any tracks, none of her belongings laid around anywhere, so right now we’re just really in a panic because we can’t find anything,’ he told Fox59News.
