A Vancouver man arrested in the deaths of his ex-girlfriend and her young daughter pleaded guilty to aggravated murder charges Thursday in Clark County Superior Court.
Kirkland Warren’s plea came just days before his trial was set to begin Monday. Warren initially pleaded not guilty last year after his former girlfriend, Meshay Melendez, and her 7-year-old daughter, Layla Stewart, were found dead near a rural road near Washougal in March 2023.
Warren’s sentencing is set for Oct. 8.
Melendez and Stewart were reported missing on March 18, 2023, six days after they had both last been seen with Warren, who was quickly named a person of interest in the case. Warren had just been released from jail and was subject to a no-contact order due to allegations of shooting at Melendez’s apartment and threatening her.
In phone calls Warren made to Melendez from jail before her disappearance, Warren blamed Melendez for his arrest and urged her to “please keep trying” to find a way to get the domestic-violence charges dropped, according to court documents.
On the night of March 11, 2023, Melendez, Stewart and Warren stayed at a friend’s house in Vancouver. According to the friend, Warren and Melendez left and returned several times throughout the night. The friend told investigators that she last saw them when Warren came back to her home to pick up Stewart the next morning. At that time, the friend noticed that Melendez was in the backseat of Warren’s car and assumed she was asleep.
Investigators later determined that Warren had shot Melendez several hours before he picked up Stewart. Vancouver Police Department detectives later tracked Warren’s cellphone activity the next day to an area along Southeast Wooding Road in Washington, where authorities found the bodies of Melendez and Stewart in a roadside ditch on March 22, 2023.
The Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office found that both died from gunshot wounds to the head. Authorities found blood from Melendez and Stewart inside of Warren’s car. The medical examiner also found DNA evidence that Warren raped Stewart, according to court records.
According to The Columbian, Senior Deputy Prosecutor Toby Krauel said Warren also agreed to plead guilty to a first-degree murder charge in Arkansas in the murder of 57-year-old Curtis Urquhart, who was shot in the head and found in a ditch in 2017.
“From our standpoint, he only has one life to live, and … he’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison,” Krauel said after Thursday’s hearing, as reported by The Columbian. “These charges adequately reflect the serious and horrendous nature of this offense.”
©2024 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit oregonlive.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
