Police say they will charge two people with kidnapping and capital murder in the death of a 3-year-old Alabama girl whose body was found amid trash 10 days after being kidnapped outside a birthday party.
Birmingham Police Chief Patrick Smith said at a news conference Tuesday that the body of a child, believed to be Kamille McKinney, was found in a dumpster that had been taken to a county landfill. Smith said police were obtaining murder warrants against two people previously identified as persons of interest in the case: 39-year-old Patrick Devone Stallworth and his 29-year-old girlfriend, Derick Irisha Brown
The announcement marked the sorrowful conclusion to the search for the missing 3-year-old, a disappearance that had gripped the state.
FILE - This undated file photo provided by the Birmingham Police Department shows Patrick Devone Stallworth. Investigators searching through garbage found the body of Kamille McKinney, who was missing more than a week, and authorities are charging two people with murder, police said Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2019. Birmingham Police Chief Patrick Smith said police were obtaining murder warrants against Stallworth and his girlfriend, Derick Irisha Brown. (Birmingham Police Department via AP, File)
Kamille, who was affectionately known as Cupcake to her family, vanished on the evening of Oct. 12 while playing outside at the Tom Brown Village Housing Community. Photographs of the smiling toddler with the big brown eyes and hair adorned with colorful bows, were displayed on billboards across the South after an Amber Alert was issued. Her image filled people's social media feeds and prayer requests
"Kamille is gone. Ripped away from her family. The pain her family is enduring is unimaginable," a somber Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin said at the news conference. "This is tough. This is a tough moment for our city."
Smith said that the girl had "touched a nation."
FILE - This undated file photo provided by the Birmingham Police Department shows Derrick Irisha Brown. Investigators searching through garbage found the body of Kamille McKinney, who was missing more than a week, and authorities are charging two people with murder, police said Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2019. Birmingham Police Chief Patrick Smith said police were obtaining murder warrants against Patrick Devone Stallworth and his girlfriend Brown. (Birmingham Police Department via AP, File)
Birmingham announced plans to light City Hall in Kamille's favorite color: Purple. A prayer vigil was planned Wednesday afternoon at a city park.
Police did not immediately release a cause of death or a suspected motive in the slaying. They also did not say how long the child had been dead.
Smith said investigators spent days combing through 12 tons of trash collected in and around the area before finding the body.
Police initially brought Stallworth and Brown in on unrelated charges after naming them persons of interest in the case. Stallworth, arrested after officers located a vehicle seen near the abduction site, previously was charged with child pornography, but authorities said the charge wasn't related to the missing child.
Lawyers for both have said they are innocent.
Investigators know of no link between the suspects and the girl or her family, Smith said.
"We believe this was something they thought about and acted upon. They saw an opportunity to take a young child, and they did," said Smith, who did not reveal a potential motive.
Police earlier had released surveillance video from a security camera that they believed showed the child before her abduction. The grainy shows what appears to be two children playing outside the complex. The two children then walk off with a man. Police did not say whether they believe that man is Stallworth. The second child, who was unharmed, wasn't identified by authorities.
The mayor and police chief asked for the community to continue to support, and pray for, the girl's parents and family. Smith said he also wanted to caution people to remain vigilant, saying it only takes a second for a tragedy to occur.
"We can no longer assume that everyone is part of the village that is trying to raise the child," Smith said.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A big, new package of U.S. military aid will help Ukraine avoid defeat in its war with Russia. Winning will still be a long slog.
The arms and ammunition in the $61 billion military aid package should enable Ukraine to slow the Russian army's bloody advances and block its strikes on troops and civilians. And it will buy Ukraine time — for long-term planning about how to take back the fifth of the country now under Russian control.
“Ultimately it offers Ukraine the prospect of staying in the war this year,” said Michael Clarke, visiting professor in war studies at King’s College London. “Sometimes in warfare you’ve just got to stay in it. You’ve just got to avoid being rolled over.”
The U.S. House of Representatives approved the package on Saturday after months of delays by some Republicans wary of U.S. involvement overseas. It was passed by the Senate on Tuesday, and President Joe Bidensigned it into law on Wednesday.
The difference could be felt within days on the front line in eastern and southern Ukraine, where Russia’s much larger army has been slowly taking territory against massively outgunned Ukrainian forces.
The aid approval means Ukraine may be able to release artillery ammunition from dwindling stocks that it has been rationing. More equipment will come soon from American stocks in Poland and Germany, and later from the U.S.
The first shipments are expected to arrive by the beginning of next week, said Davyd Arakhamia, a lawmaker with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party.
But opposition lawmaker Vadym Ivchenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament’s National Security, Defense and Intelligence Committee, said logistical challenges and bureaucracy could delay shipments to Ukraine by two to three months, and it would be even longer before they reach the front line.
While details of the shipments are classified, Ukraine’s most urgent needs are artillery shells to stop Russian troops from advancing, and anti-aircraft missiles to protect people and infrastructure from missiles, drones and bombs.
What’s coming first is not always what front-line commanders need most, said Arakhamia, the Ukrainian lawmaker. He said that even a military giant like the U.S. does not have stockpiles of everything.
“The logic behind this first package was, you (the U.S.) finds our top priorities and then you see what you have in the warehouses,” Arakhamia said. “And sometimes they do not match.”
Hope for future breakthroughs for Ukraine still hangs on more timely deliveries of Western aid, lawmakers acknowledge.
Many experts believe that both Ukraine and Russia are exhausted by two years of war and won’t be able to mount a major offensive — one capable of making big strategic gains — until next year.
Still, Russia is pushing forward at several points along the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front, using tanks, wave after wave of infantry troops and satellite-guided gliding bombs to pummel Ukrainian forces. Russia is also hitting power plants and pounding Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, which is only about 30 kilometers (some 20 miles) from the Russian border.
Ivchenko said the goal for Ukraine’s forces now is to “hold the line” until the bulk of new supplies arrive by mid-summer. Then, they can focus on trying to recapture territory recently lost in the Donetsk region.
“And probably ... at the end of summer we’ll see some movement, offensive movement of the Ukrainian armed forces,” he said.
Some military experts doubt Ukraine has the resources to mount even small offensives very soon.
The U.S. funding “can probably only help stabilize the Ukrainian position for this year and begin preparations for operations in 2025,” said Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank.
In the best-case scenario for Ukraine, the American aid will give commanders time to reorganize and train its army — applying lessons learned from its failed summer 2023 offensive. It may also galvanize Ukraine’s allies in Europe to increase aid.
“So this just wasn’t about Ukraine and the United States, this really affected our entire 51-country coalition,” said U.S. Congressman Bill Keating, a Democrat who visited Kyiv on Monday as part of a four-member congressional delegation.
Zelenskyy insists Ukraine's war aim is to recapture all its territory from Russia — including Crimea, seized illegally in 2014. Even if the war ultimately ends through negotiation, as many experts believe, Ukraine wants to do that from as strong a position as possible.
Whatever happens on the battlefield, Ukraine still faces variables beyond its control.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump, who seeks to retake the White House in the November election, has said he would end the war within days of taking office. And the 27-nation Europe Union includes leaders like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who have opposed arming Ukraine.
Ukraine’s allies have held back from supplying some arms out of concern about escalation or depleting their own stocks. Ukraine says that to win the war it needs longer-range missiles it could use for potentially game-changing operations such as cutting off occupied Crimea, where's Russia's Black Sea fleet is based.
It wants a longer-range version of Army Tactical Missile Systems, known as ATACMs, from the U.S. and Taurus cruise missiles from Germany. Both governments have resisted calls to send them because they are capable of striking targets deep within Russian territory.
The new bill authorizes the president to send Ukraine the longer-range ATACMS, which have a range of some 300 kilometers (190 miles), “as soon as practicable.” It's unclear what that will mean in practice.
Sometimes, promised weapons have arrived late, or not at all. Zelenskyy recently pointed out that Ukraine is still waiting for the F-16 fighter jets it was promised a year ago.
Meanwhile, Russia is using its advantage in troops and weapons to push back Ukrainian forces, perhaps seeking to make maximum gains before Ukraine's new supplies arrive.
For weeks it has pummeled the small eastern city of Chasiv Yar, suffering heavy losses. Britain's Ministry of Defense says 900 Russian troops are being killed or injured a day in the war.
Capturing the strategically important hill town would allow them to move toward Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, key cities Ukraine controls in the eastern region of Donetsk. It would be a significant win for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who Western officials say is bent on toppling Ukraine’s pro-Western government.
Russian pressure was aimed not just at gaining territory, but on undermining Zelenskyy and bolstering critics who say his war plan is failing, said Clarke of King's College London.
The U.S. aid package decreases the likelihood of a political crisis in Ukraine, and U.S. Speaker Mike Johnson deserves credit for pushing it through Congress, he said.
"He held history in his hands,” Clarke said.
This story has been updated to correct Orbán's title, the Slovak prime minister's name and that the British estimate of daily Russian losses is for the war, not one battle.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
From left, U.S. representatives Nathaniel Moran, R-Tx, Tom Kean Jr, R-NJ, Bill Keating, D-Mass, and Madeleine Deane, D-Pa, talk to journalists during a joint news conference outside Saint Michael cathedral in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 22, 2024. A newly approved package of $61 billion in U.S. aid may prevent Ukraine from losing its war against Russia. But winning it will be a long slog. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
A volunteer makes a camouflage net at a facility producing material for Ukrainian soldiers in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 22, 2024. A newly approved package of $61 billion in U.S. aid may prevent Ukraine from losing its war against Russia. But winning it will be a long slog. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Davyd Arakhamia, a lawmaker with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's Servant of the People party, talks during an interview with Associated Press in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
A woman rallies to raise awareness on the fate of Ukrainian prisoners of war in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, April 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Ribbons with the colors of the European Union and Ukraine are attached to a tree next to memorial wall of Ukrainian soldiers killed during the war in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
The body of a woman killed by Russian bombardment in Chernihiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, April 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Soldiers carry the coffins of two Ukrainian army sergeants during their funeral in Lviv, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
