8-year-old’s body was in trailer as couple drove across multiple state lines, cops say

UPDATE: A couple who traveled from Washington to South Dakota with the girlfriend’s dead 8-year-old daughter in a U-Haul were arrested on a warrant accusing them of “homicide by abuse” on Thursday, Dec. 15, police said.

An arrest warrant was issued out of Spokane for Mandie Miller and Aleksander Kurmoyarov, the Mitchell Police Department said in a Friday, Dec. 16 Facebook post.

The original story is below.

A couple is accused of driving from Washington to South Dakota with the girlfriend’s dead 8-year-old daughter in a U-Haul trailer, police said.

The Davison County Coroner in South Dakota notified police on Dec. 14 after a couple contacted the office saying they were traveling from Washington State to Pine Ridge with the deceased child, the Mitchell Police Department said in a Dec. 15 Facebook post.

Officers found the man and woman at a home in Mitchell with a “U-Haul tow behind trailer,” according to police. The couple told police that the trailer had a coffin with the woman’s 8-year-old daughter’s body.

Police told McClatchy News that the man is not the girl’s biological or adoptive father.

The couple, a 28-year-old man and his 33-year-old girlfriend, drove with the body from Airway Heights, Washington, to Mitchell, South Dakota, a nearly 1,200-mile drive, police said.

The boyfriend told police the girl died in “Airway Heights a little before Halloween,” while her adoptive mother said she died in early September, according to police.

The man “admitted that he did not seek medical attention for the deceased juvenile when she died because he and (his girlfriend) wanted to spend more time with her and that he was afraid that they would get in trouble,” police said.

The couple were in South Dakota for about four days, two of those days in Mitchell, before being found with the child’s body, police said.

They never notified law enforcement in either state of the child’s death, police said.

The couple “were each charged with one count of failure to notify law enforcement of death of child,” according to police.

South Dakota law states legal guardians and caretakers face a Class 5 felony for failing to notify law enforcement within six hours of learning about a minor’s death.

Police said the investigation is ongoing with authorities in Washington.

Mitchell is about 70 miles west of Sioux Falls.

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