RAGLAND, Ala. — When 9-year-old Katelynn Arnold didn’t appear right away after one of her frequent bicycle rides along her rural Alabama road, her concerned aunt set out to look for the girl.
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The woman, who is the girl’s foster mother, checked with a neighbor whose daughter often played with Katelynn, but he hadn’t seen her. When she returned home Thursday evening, she found the girl hanged from a tree with an old tire swing rope, deliberately, authorities say, by her 14-year-old half-brother who was charged Friday with murder.
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The cotton rope was tied in a simple knot around the girl’s neck, but was not a hangman’s noose, said St. Clair County Sheriff Terry Surles. County Coroner Dennis Russell said an autopsy found the cause of death was homicide due to ligature strangulation.
The neighbor, Ricky Campbell, could only shake his head when thinking about what happened.
“She never got a chance to grow up. Her life was taken away,” he said.
The accused boy admitted to killing her by hanging, Surles said. He said the boy told investigators a motive but Surles did not release it. A call came into the sheriff’s department about 8:10 p.m. Thursday and by the time investigators arrived, rescuers had removed the girl from the tree and she was pronounced dead at a hospital.
The half-siblings were living with their aunt and uncle in Ragland, a town of some 1,900 people about 40 miles northeast of Birmingham, as part of a foster home situation, Surles said. Authorities did not release their names, but Campbell identified them as Jerry and Teresa McMahan and an address search shows a couple by that name living on that road.
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