A man, Joshua Williams, 23 has been charged with str+ngling a 15-year-old girl in the South Shore neighborhood in Chicago.
According to CBS News, he’s charged with first-degree m¥rder in the d£ath of Amarise Parker. Police said Williams str+ngled Parker on Tuesday, December 12, 2023, in the 7200 block of South Phillips Avenue. Her body was found in the building around 7:24 p.m. the same day.
Prosecutors said Williams and Parker had been in a dating relationship, and her family had filed several missing persons reports when she would leave home. It is reported that Parker had been staying with the suspect for several days before the m¥rder.
On Sunday, December 10, she went to the home of a neighbor of Williams, and asked to use the phone to call her mother to get picked up. When her mother went to Williams’ home to pick her up, she couldn’t find Parker, who called her again the next morning asking to be picked up, prosecutors said.
This time, when Parker’s mother went to pick her up, she got in her mother’s car and went home with her, and told her mother Williams would not let her leave. Parker told her mother she escaped when Williams thought she was in the bathroom. When Parker’s mother left their apartment that day to pick up her other daughter from school, she returned home to find Parker gone.
Prosecutors said Parker had returned to Williams’ home on Monday, December 11, and stayed overnight. Neighbors heard them arguing that night, and around 7 p.m. on Dec. 12, Williams called his cousin and a friend and told them Williams was foaming at the mouth, and he didn’t know what to do.
Williams’ cousin called 911, and paramedics arrived to find Parker lying in a closet with a blanket covering her body, except for her head. A necklace was lodged in her throat, and her neck was red and c¥t. She also had scratches on the side of her face, leading to her neck. She was pronounced dEad at the scene and an autopsy determined that she d#ed from asphyxiation and str+ngulation. He windpipe had been cr¥shed, according to prosecutors.
Police questioned Williams on Wednesday, December 13, and released him without charges at that time, but was arrested again on Saturday, when he told police he and Parker had fallen asleep together the night of Dec. 11, and when Parker didn’t wake up the next day, he panicked and called his cousin, but he denied #ghting with Parker.
CBS News reported that a search of Williams’ phone revealed videos of him to¥ching Parker’s body on the night of Dec. 12.
