A man has been charged with killing his neighbor one day before what would have been her 25th birthday.
The Jackson County Prosecutor's Office charged Cedrick Russell, 25, with first-degree murder in the killing of Ashley Geddes.
He's also charged with sodomy or attempted sodomy, first-degree burglary, stealing, tampering with a motor vehicle and tampering with physical evidence.
The accused killer is the brother of Geddes's next-door neighbor.
Despite the crime, he didn't run away. In fact, neighbors told 41 Action News he was at the scene when police showed up on June 1 to the 10500 block of East 45th Place.
"I noticed these cuts and I said, 'Hey what happened to you?' He said he was in an accident--some kind of form of accident," Shellithia Dunlop, a neighbor, said.
Police found Geddes after her mother, Stacy Gicante, went looking for her.
Gicante found Geddes in the upstairs bedroom of the young woman's townhome naked, lying face down, covered in vomit.
"No mother should ever find her child like I found mine," Gicante said in a news conference Monday.
Prosecutors said Russell took Geddes's car, phone and jewelry. According to court documents he pawned the stolen jewelry shortly after her death.
"She did not deserve this," Gicante said.
DNA evidence led detectives to Russell, who dumped the victim's car in Raytown.
He told police that Geddes stopped breathing as he choked her during sex.
"Being mother myself it just breaks my heart that someone has to go through something like this. I can only imagine the kind of pain that young lady's mom is going through," Dana Abram, a neighbor, said.
Neighbors say Russell hadn't lived on the block long. He recently got out of prison for burglary and domestic assault charges from 2010.
"I'm sad for both of the families. You know everybody is going to be affected, you can't let people be out here like this--that's not right," Dunlop said.
Prosecutors are requesting a $500,000 bond. Online court records do not indicate if Russell has an attorney.
