A Vancouver man who killed his ex-girlfriend and her 7-year-old daughter and then dumped their bodies on the side of a wooded Washougal road last year was sentenced Tuesday to life behind bars.
Meshay Melendez, 27, and her daughter, Layla Stewart, were found dead from gunshot wounds to the head on March 22, 2023 — 10 days after they’d been reported missing by a friend.
Kirkland Warren, who also had a wife, killed Melendez first and then picked up her daughter from a friend, who saw Melendez sprawled in the car and assumed she was passed out, court records show.
The two victims were found partially naked, and prosecutors later charged Warren with first-degree child rape based on forensic evidence.
As part of a plea deal, Warren admitted to both murders and entered an Alford plea to a single count of first-degree child molestation. Alford pleas allow a person to maintain their innocence, but function as a guilty plea for the purposes of sentencing.
Warren, now 29, will also plead guilty to killing 57-year-old Curtis Urquhart, who was shot in the head and found in a ditch in Arkansas in 2017. Warren grew up in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, has two daughters, and was the son of a municipal judge, records show.
In a statement to the Clark County Superior Court, Melendez’s’s mother, Nichole Harris, said she had lost her only daughter and grandchild due to the actions of an “evil man.”
“Meshay and Layla may not have been anything to that evil, but they were everything to me,” Harris wrote. “Meshay once said to me, ‘I don’t know how I got blessed with such an amazing daughter,’ and I reminded her that it was because she was such a beautiful soul.”
Stewart’s father, Javontae Stewart, called the loss “devastating.”
Court documents show Warren claimed he and Melendez were arguing about his second cellphone when she fumbled with a gun and accidentally shot her daughter twice, then herself.
Warren’s account says he had given the .22 caliber pistol to Melendez due to her line of work, and was under the influence of marijuana, mushrooms and cocaine when the killings happened. He claimed he downed a bottle of prescription painkillers afterward, but then threw them up and drove to the home of his wife, Monet Tyler-Warren, where he hid out for a few days.
Tyler-Warren, 27, had been stealing money from a credit union where she worked around the time of the killings, The Oregonian/OregonLive previously reported. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years of probation in February.
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