Adam Slater Palm Desert, California man arrested stabbing pregnant woman, Ashley Grome and throwing their one year old daughter Maddie over a steep cliff to her death.
A 49-year-old Palm Desert man is accused of throwing his 1-year-old daughter over a steep cliff after stabbing her pregnant mother and a bystander who tried to help following a Wednesday morning car crash.
Adam Slater, 49, crashed his vehicle on Highway 74 in the Coachella Valley, Wednesday morning, police said, moments after taking his one year old daughter, Madalyn Payton Slater from the child’s mother following an altercation.
Riverside County Sheriff’s Department described the series of events as a culmination of a ‘domestic violence incident’ in which the child’s father, stabbed the mother and then took their child and sped away in a white vehicle.
California authorities tracked the father down at a crash site along Highway 74 in the Coachella Valley, around 9 a.m. Wednesday — about 30 minutes after reports of the initial incident outside a church. The man’s vehicle had overturned and come to rest several hundred feet from the road, officials said.
Witnesses told investigators that a Good Samaritan freed Slater’s daughter from the vehicle, but Slater stabbed the man.
‘The suspect then took the girl from the arms of the male he stabbed,‘ according to the sheriff’s department news release. ‘Multiple witnesses saw the suspect take the child and throw her over a steep cliff into a ravine. The suspect then fled on foot into the canyon.’
After a brief foot chase, authorities detained Slater. They then found his daughter’s body and determined that she did not survive the Desert Sun reports.
Justice for Madalyn:
Slater was briefly hospitalized with injuries he’d suffered in the crash, while the male bystander who was stabbed ‘sought medical treatment on his own,’ according to the news release.
Despite the sheriff’s department declining to identify the woman Slater is accused of assaulting, relatives according to KESQ-TV, identified her as Ashley Grome, 25, and the girl as Grome’s and Slater’s 1-year-old daughter, Maddie.
Relatives said Grome and Slater are married. Slater had made threats against Grome, who is 6 months pregnant. It wasn’t clear why Grome and Slater reportedly met outside Southwest Church, but relatives said that once he was there Slater began attacking Grome and attempted to stab her in the neck and stomach.
As the woman fought back, Slater grabbed their one year old child and sped away.
A GoFundMe page, ‘Justice for Madalyn’ seeking donations for the child’s funeral was set up Thursday by the deceased child’s mother.
Posted Grome: ‘I am the mother of Madalyn Payton Slater, the one-year-old baby girl who was killed on May 6, 2020 by her father when he drove off of Highway 74 after beating and stabbing me, then leaving me to die in the Southwest Community Church parking lot,’
‘My daughter was the absolute love of my life and she meant everything and more to me. Everything I did and everything I will do for the rest of my life is for her.’
According to her Facebook page, Grome and Slater got married in March 2018.
Palm Desert California father prior criminal history:
Following his release from hospital on Thursday, Slater was booked into the Indio jail on three felony counts of second-degree murder, attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon.
He is being held on $1million bail pending his next court appearance scheduled for Monday morning.
Meanwhile, it has emerged that Slater is registered as a sex offender in California stemming from a 1995 conviction for sexual penetration of a victim with a foreign object by force.
Slater was released from prison after serving two years in that case.
Authorities asked that anyone with information contact the Central Homicide Unit at (951) 955-2777.
