Mom strangled to death, presumably by Dad; baby abandoned at scene (Trenton, New Jersey)

The UNNAMED DAD is the main suspect in the strangulation murder of his girfriend, the mother of their eight-month-old baby, who was left abandoned by the mom's death. There was a history of domestic violence, and the unnamed dad had already done prison time for torching an ex-girlfriend's house. The police note a rise of domestic violence and abuse in the Trenton area--three other Trenton area women have been recently killed by boyfriends or ex-boyfriends. Note to police: Maybe it's time to get serious with these guys, and not just revise "policies."

http://www.trentonian.com/articles/2009/07/01/news/doc4a4aeb5714641568957467.txt

23-year-old mom's strangulation may be city's latest deadly domestic
Published: Wednesday, July 1, 2009

By The Trentonian

TRENTON — The death of 23-year-old Ashle McKinney has been classified as a homicide by the city police department, and investigators are looking into whether the killing was the result of another case of domestic violence.

Police Director Irving Bradley Jr. said last night that the county medical examiner’s autopsy revealed that McKinney had been strangled to death in her Mellon Street apartment on Sunday.
While considered suspicious from the start, police initially were hesitant to officially label the death as a murder, since no outward signs of physical trauma were evident on the victim’s body. Homicide detectives, however, have been on the case since McKinney’s body was discovered.

“They’ve been working it since Sunday,” said Bradley of his detectives’ handling of the case. “We still treated it as a homicide, but we just weren’t sure.”

Police said McKinney was found just after noon on Sunday by two friends who entered to find McKinney’s 8-month-old child left unattended before ultimately making the shocking discovery in the bedroom. The child was unharmed, police said.

Bradley said investigators have a person of interest in mind in the case, but stopped short of calling him a suspect and declined to identify the individual.

A source close to McKinney said she’d just begun a new job two weeks ago as a page at the East Trenton Branch Library, and said the victim’s family members had recently attempted to intervene in a violent domestic situation involving her.

It was alleged, the source said, that the father of McKinney’s child had been beating her.

A police source added that the victim’s boyfriend had returned home from prison recently after doing a stretch behind bars for torching a former girlfriend’s house.

Bradley and other police officials declined to confirm any of that information, but the director said the seeming rise of domestic violence and abuse has been a growing cause of concern.

“This is another domestic related incident, but we’re still working diligently to try and encourage people that have problems like that to bring it to the forefront at the police department so we can work on helping them out,” Bradley said.

In May, Bradley launched a new initiative for the department aimed at tightening domestic violence policies, fostering cooperation with other law enforcement agencies and nonprofits, and implementing further training on the subject to his officers.

If McKinney’s murder turns out to be the product of domestic violence, she would join city residents Lisa Glennon, 38, Denise Leonard, 46, and Yerika Hernandez, 27, as women who were all killed by current or ex-boyfriends.