Missing tot 'sold to meth dealer' after suffering horrific abuse from parents

Daily Record

5 days ago

Baby London Kerr was reportedly beaten with a wooden paddle and even shot at with a BB gun by her mum, Ashley Ceejay Rowland and her boyfriend, Joshua Denton. The pair have now been arrested.
A missing two-year-old girl was allegedly sold to a meth dealer after enduring appalling abuse at the hands of her own parents.
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Baby London Kerr was allegedly beaten with a wooden paddle and even shot at with a BB gun by her mum, Ashley Ceejay Rowland, 39, and her boyfriend, Joshua Denton, 40.
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The pair have now been arrested on multiple child abuse charges over the little girl's disappearance. London, from Oklahoma, was last seen in 2022 in the arms of her mum's drug dealer, before vanishing, reports the Mirror.
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Three years on, police detained Rowland and Denton on August 5.
Their arrests come just days after a separate case in which a five-year-old boy was murdered by kidnappers when his mum couldn't pay a £39 ransom.
Concerns over London's welfare were first raised in April 2023 when authorities failed to find her during a court ordered pick up. At first, Rowland claimed her daughter was living with her father in Georgia.
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But according to arrest reports, she later admitted she'd handed the toddler to a man called 'Carlos' in 2022, a man she bought methamphetamine from.
Rowland allegedly told police that was the last time she saw her daughter. She claimed Carlos had said he was heading to Mexico but she never gave him any of London's identification.
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Before allegedly abandoning the tot, the pair are accused of subjecting her to sickening cruelty. Rowland's teenage children told police the couple locked London in a closet, shot her with BB guns, and whipped her with a wooden paddle.
Denton's own teenage daughters told officers he had poured hot sauce into the child's eyes and forced her to eat a hot pepper.
Rowland and Denton were arrested on Tuesday on multiple charges.
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Denton is now facing nine charges, including six counts of child abuse, one count of forcible sodomy, one count of lewd or indecent acts to a child, and one count of engaging in a pattern of criminal offences.
Rowland faces one count of enabling child abuse, and was previously charged last year with abandonment of a child in Oklahoma County District Court.
Police say Rowland's two teenage children have also accused Denton of physical abuse towards them and London, including taping one of the teens to a chair before beating them with a belt.
Authorities have renewed their search for London, who is due to turn six years old in September. Oklahoma City police Sgt. Dillon Quirk told KOCO-TV: "Time is of the essence, still hoping for a positive turnout in this case, and we don't have a lot to go off of right now, which makes it extremely difficult."