COLUMBIA, Pa. — A Pennsylvania man is accused of killing his ex-girlfriend’s 12-year-old daughter and hiding the body in a freezer, authorities said.
Jason Jerod Shackelford, 39, of Columbia, was arrested Friday and charged with one count of criminal homicide, according to online court docket records.
According to the Columbia Borough Police Department, the girl’s body was found in a basement freezer in a Lancaster County home, the Patriot-News reported.
The discovery came after police were called to the Wyndham Lancaster Hotel and Convention Center in Lancaster on Friday after a report of a disturbance, police said in a news release. A woman told police she was working an overnight shift at the hotel the day before, according to the Patriot-News. She said that Shackelford had told her he had kidnapped her daughter from their home, the release stated.
The woman told police that she and Shackelford were going through a breakup and that she had asked him to move out, the Patriot-News reported. While working on Thursday, she said she received a text from Shackelford at 6:30 a.m. EST stating that her daughter was ill.
When the woman arrived home about an hour later, she told police she got into an argument with Shackelford, who showed her the girl’s empty bed, police said.
Police said that Shackelford allegedly told the woman that he took the girl to New York, where she was safe. The woman told police that Shackelford then used the girl’s well-being “as leverage” to allegedly sexually assault her at the Lancaster hotel, the release stated.
The woman said Shackelford allowed her to leave the room to smoke a cigarette, and she alerted hotel employees to call the police, according to the Patriot-News.
Police detained Shackelford, who allegedly told detectives that he raped and killed the girl at her home in Columbia. He added that he attempted to conceal her body in the basement freezer. Police discovered the girl’s body during an initial search of the home, WGAL-TV reported.
The name of the woman and her daughter were not released by authorities.
Additional charges may be filed by the district attorney’s office pending the results of an autopsy, police said in their news release.
