Two young girls, whose butchered bodies were found stuffed inside suitcases at an Ohio park, were half-sisters, a medical examiner revealed Wednesday.
A dog-walker stumbled across the “juvenile black females,” who are believed to be between the ages of 8 and 14 years old, when his testy pooch refused to move off of a mound of dirt near a playground in Cleveland on Monday evening.
The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office did not reveal a firm cause of death in the suspect homicide Wednesday, but it did confirm the victims were half-sisters, Cleveland 19 reported.
The brutalized bodies, which were concealed in suitcases and buried in shallow graves, were there for “some time,” Cleveland Police Chief Dorothy Todd said.
“It is traumatic for everyone,” Todd told the outlet. “It is traumatic for those who live in the area to know that this was right there at their doorstep.”
Todd said they are diligently parsing through statewide databases and missing children reports with assistance from “state, federal and local partners as police work to identify the young victims.
Cleveland local Phillip Donaldson came across the mutilated bodies around 6 p.m. Monday when his dog dragged him to the edge of the park and incessantly pawed at the ground.
When Donaldson dredged up the first suitcase, he shockingly found “somebody’s head in it” — before frantically calling 911.
It is unclear if Donaldson also discovered the second suitcase, where the other victim’s remains were hidden.
The suitcases were buried near the Ginn Academy, the only all-boys’ public high school in Ohio.
Anyone with information is urged to contact the Cleveland Police Homicide Unit at 216-623-5464.
