Two days before her body was found burning in a Fresno alley, N-Kya Rebecca Logan was at a baby shower.
The 26-year-old was pregnant with a boy who was about 36 weeks pregnant and planned to name him Noah.
But on Tuesday, officials said the mother and son’s future was wiped out with a gruesome murder at the hands of her brother.
Fresno Police Chief Paco Valderrama said Wednesday at a press conference with Disto that Aaron Jamal Dudley, 41, was arrested in connection with the murder and stabbed Logan to death before taking her body into an alley and setting it on fire. Attie. Lisa Smitcamp and others involved.
Valderrama said the investigation began around 12:30 p.m. Tuesday when someone reported seeing a burning body in a dirt alley near 4,400 blocks on North Cornelia Avenue.
After recovering evidence and information, police produced bystander photographs of Dudley believed to be standing over Logan’s corpse, as well as surveillance footage showing him pushing a trash can believed to contain the body. Valderrama said he had named Dudley as a suspect after recovering information including:
According to Valderrama, Dudley was arrested while trying to escape the house where he lived with his mother and Logan. After obtaining a search warrant for him, detectives headed to his home.
“He ran away from the police, which is very typical of a guilty man,” the chief said.
Dudley was booked at 5:43 p.m. Wednesday, according to Fresno County Sheriff’s Office prison records.
Police had previously been called to the house on July 28, 2021, when someone called to report that Dudley was a threat to themselves or others, Valderrama said. He was placed in his 72-hour psychiatric custody involuntarily.
Still, the chief said he believed Dudley was competent to stand trial.
“This is someone who had the means to clean up the evidence and try to dispose of the corpse and ran when the police came knocking on the door to see what was going on,” Valderrama said. said. “This is not someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
Officials said they believed Logan and her unborn child died from the stab wound, but released few other details on Wednesday.
When asked what type of weapon was used, Valderrama replied, “A sharp weapon like a knife,” but declined to specify.
Smitcamp said her office intends to indict Dudley on two counts of murder under special circumstances.
“Murder of a fetus by a third party [premeditation] Murder is murder as long as the fetus is shown to have progressed past the embryonic stage… seven to eight weeks,” she said.
Extra-uterine fetal viability “is not a criminal element to prove fetal murder,” Smitcamp said.
The case has not yet been submitted to the district attorney’s office.