A 32-year-old woman was charged Tuesday with killing her 9-year-old daughter in Westminster.
Khadiyjah Aliyyah Pendergraph was charged with one count of murder and was scheduled to be arraigned sometime Tuesday afternoon in the jail courtroom in Santa Ana.
Officers were dispatched at about noon Friday to a residence in the 14100 block of Goldenwest Street for a welfare check on the girl following a “tip from a concerned family member,” police reported. Officers forced their way into the empty home and found the body of the girl with “obvious signs of trauma,” police said.
Pendergraph was initially a “person of interest,” who was found and arrested at a shopping center in Aliso Viejo, police said.
Authorities have not yet released the name of the victim.