Two South Carolina teens are charged with murder after 'torturing girl, 13, to death'

Two South Carolina teenagers have been charged with the murder of a missing 13-year-old girl after they 'viciously tortured her to death'.

Ka’Niyah Baker, 13, was found dead and burned 'with traumatic injuries to her face and body' after a house fire inside an abandoned home in the community of Capital Heights last week.

'The manner of death was not an accident and this was not a suicide,' Naida Rutherford, the Richland County coroner, said during a press conference. 

'This is a horrible homicide. Ka’Niyah was bludgeoned, stabbed and burned.'

Two unnamed teenage suspects, a 15-year-old girl and a 16-year-old girl, have been arrested in connection with the death, police announced on Saturday.

'Brutal, heinous, vicious, gruesome, monstrous and disturbing,' Columbia Police Chief 'Skip' Holbrook said at the press conference. 'These are the words I use to describe this murder investigation.'

The discovery came after authorities were called to a fire at 114 Cardamon Court, a vacant home, on the evening of January 15 at around 10.30pm. The property is about 20 miles away from where Baker was reported missing from her foster home two days previously.

But when they made entry into the smoking building they found Baker lying dead on the floor inside.  

Baker had suffered traumatic injuries to her face and body and had been severely burned, Holbrook said. Her official cause of death was blunt force trauma.

The victim's injures were said to be so severe that police were unable to immediately identify her. According to the coroner 'visual identification was just not possible.'

The fact that there was no personal identification or evidence found inside the home made the process even more challenging.

Crime scene investigators worked inside the vacant home alongside the Columbia Fire Department and arson investigators for more than eight hours that night.

They documented trace evidence, blood evidence and determined the origin and cause of the fire before meeting with the Richland County Sheriff's Department the next day to identify the victim.

'In our meeting with the sheriff's department we learned that they had recently taken up an investigation of a missing juvenile,' Holbrook said.

DNA from dirty clothing that Baker's foster mother brought to investigators ultimately determined the victim to be their missing teen.

Baker, who was originally from Sumter, recently entered the foster care system in Columbia and had a 'history of running away', according to police. 

In a missing person's flyer Baker was said to have been last seen on January 13 on Auburnleaf Drive in Hopkins where she was initially 'believed to be in danger,' WBTV reported.

The Richland County Sheriff's missing person report stated that Baker ran away from Auburnleaf Drive between midnight and 6pm. She was also said to have purchased a phone shortly before. 

On Saturday Chief Holbrook announced the arrest of two teenage girls from Columbia, both of whom are high school dropouts and frequent runaways.

The incident raises questions about the rise in teenage homicides and the social aspects of health that impact violence among the younger population. 

During the conference Holbrook highlighted the lack of parents in teen lives as the common theme among the 'senseless violence' happening throughout the city of Columbia.

He also said that poor mental health plays a role in teen violence, noting how his department has observed its prevalence in younger age groups. 

The 16-year-old suspect, who was reported missing by her mother on January 12, is wanted by the Department of Juvenile Justice after 'cutting off her ankle monitor'.

Holbrook said that the first suspect, who last attended school in January of 2024, has a 'history of disorderly conduct', 'malicious injury' and other crimes. 

The second suspect, a 15-year-old girl, was last enrolled in school in December of 2024.  

The number of young people aged 12 to 17 who were killed by homicides nearly doubled between 2019 and 2022. It rose from 717 deaths in 2018 to 1,409 in 2022, according to the US Department of Justice. 

'All of the girls involved had some sort of affiliation with systems that were supposed to protect them,' Rutherford told USA Today. 'And I believe the system failed all three of these young women.' 

Hayden Smith, a Criminology and Criminal Justice professor at the University of South Carolina, said the case indicates a presence of underlying trauma for all three girls involved, USA Today reported.

Smith said that factors tied into children's environments, such as health and access to housing and education, is partly why there has been increasing youth violence across the country. 

'Even beyond a traumatic event like this, for a group of people who are exposed to these adverse childhood experiences, they tend to last a lifetime. That is unless you can counterbalance with resiliency, certain skills, stability and positive experiences,' he said. 

Adverse childhood experiences can include violence, abuse, neglect, witnessing violence in the home, having a family member die by suicide, substance use, mental health problems, incarcerated parents, and parental separation.

Having these adverse childhood experiences before the age of 18 can lead to lifelong physical and mental impacts and can critically impact a child's brain development and decision-making skills, Smith explained.   

Chandra Cleveland, a private investigator with 34 years of experience in law enforcement, explained that girl-on-girl violence is increasing, WTLX reported.

'I was surprised but not too surprised,' Cleveland said. 

'If you've been reading or hearing the news in other states, this is a trend that is going on about these mean girls and they have taken it as far as killing people. And now it has shown its ugly head in the state of South Carolina.'

'We need to address the elephant in the room and that is the girls who are getting to be so violent and fighting in schools,' she said. 'The amount of girls that are in girl fights in school is astonishing.'

Cleveland explained the situation as being a symptom of an overcrowded foster care system, noting how Baker had run away from her foster homes previously.

'Someone is not going back, checking if a child comes to you and says "I don't want to stay in this foster home anymore because of this, this or this,"' she added.

The solicitor's office is expected to petition the family court and ask to charge the two teenage girls as adults, according to Saturday's press conference.

'We expect to pursue justice in this matter,' Byron Gipson, the Fifth Circuit solicitor, said.

Both girls were arrested on charges surrounding the homicide along with arson, possession of a weapon during a violent crime and the desecration of human remains. 

'We've got some work to do with our system. We've got some work to do with our young people,' Holbrook said. 

'There's too much despair. And we've got to change that,' he added. 'This is gut-wrenching.'