A Somali national has been charged with kidnapping a girl who was one of three children found in Des Moines after her mother’s body was found in southwest Missouri.
Thirty-seven-year-old Mahamud Mahamed, of Noel, was charged Tuesday. He is not in custody.
The body of 25-year-old Jessica McCormack was found late last month Investigators believe she was stuffed into a suitcase that rolled down a hill after being thrown from a moving vehicle. Her three young children were missing until a woman in Des Moines, Iowa, told authorities Mahemed brought them to her home on August 5th, but left three days later.
Authorities say the four-year-old who was found in Des Moines is not Mahemed’s child and the kidnapping charge relates to that child. Mahemed is the father of the two-year old he left in Des Moines. The paternity of the murdered woman’s six-month-old child has not been determined, according to prosecutors.
(By Ty Albright, KZRG, Joplin)