Hours before Army Pfc. Karlyn Ramirez was found dead in her Maryland home in August 2015, she called her mother and sister in an uncharacteristic panic.
“She said ‘I don’t know what is wrong. I don’t feel right. I don’t feel safe. Do you think my baby knows I love her?’ ” Ramirez’s sister, Roxanne, said in a March interview with Crime Watch Daily. “I am like, ‘Why are you talking like this? What happened?’ [Ramirez said,] ‘I don’t know. I can’t tell you. I don’t know.’ ”
Authorities say Ramirez, a 24-year-old soldier based at Fort Meade, Maryland, was found shot to death in her home in Severn, Maryland, on Aug. 25, 2015.
Her 5-month-old daughter, Kattaleya Vale Kearney, was found next to her lifeless body, unharmed, according to authorities.
On Thursday, more than a year after the slaying, police in San Antonio, Texas, arrested Ramirez’s husband, Army Sgt. 1st Class Maliek Kearney, 35, and his 31-year-old girlfriend, Dolores Delgado, for allegedly traveling across the country to murder her, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The arrests came after a federal grand jury in Maryland indicted the pair on Tuesday for crossing state lines “to commit domestic violence resulting in death, in connection with the death of Karlyn Ramirez,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
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The indictment alleges that Kearney and Delgado “conspired to murder Karlyn Ramirez,” U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein announced Friday.
The indictment further alleges that on Aug. 24, 2015, Delgado and Kearney traveled from South Carolina, where he was stationed, to Maryland “with the intent to kill Ramirez,” according to federal prosecutors. Kearney and Ramirez were newly married at the time of her death, according to Crime Watch Daily.
The defendants appeared last week in U.S. District Court in San Antonio for a brief hearing. They were ordered to be held pending their detention hearings on Thursday and Oct. 18. It was not immediately clear if either has entered a plea.
Both face a maximum sentence of life in prison.
“I am grateful to the police and prosecutors who have been working tirelessly to pursue justice in this case,” U.S. Attorney Rosenstein said in a statement.
Calls to Kearney’s lawyer were not immediately returned, and it was not immediately clear if Delgado has retained an attorney. Attempts to reach the Ramirez family were unsuccessful.
