Nearly three years after finding her 6-year-old daughter raped and murdered in her bed, Stephanie Romeo recalled the harrowing moments that led up to her realization her daughter was gone. Testifying during the first day of trial against the man accused of the August 2018 killing, Romeo said she had no idea anything was amiss at first, according to the Albuquerque Journal. She climbed right into bed at her suburban Albuquerque home after coming.
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Leland Hust, the man accused of killing 6 year-old Ariana Jade Romeo, is seen at the Valencia County District Court on Wednesday, the first day of his trial for the 2018 killing in Rio Rancho. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis/Albuquerque Journal)
LOS LUNAS Detectives botched the investigation of the rape and strangulation death of a 6-year-old girl and later coerced an incriminating statement from the man charged with the killing, his attorney told jurors Wednesday.
Leland Hust, now 24, is charged with intentional child abuse resulting in death and rape of a child younger than 13, both first-degree felonies, in the August 2018 death of Ariana “Jade” Romeo.