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KANNAPOLIS, N.C. – 15-month-old Malaya Heun died in a way no one should. She was beaten so badly, her intestines ruptured. She had seven broken ribs. A broken collar bone. Bruises all over her head and body. A warrant shows Malaya also had a small amount of alcohol in her system.
“There were a lot of nights I couldn’t find sleep. I thought about the case over and over, and I still do. I still think about Malaya, ” says Kannapolis Police detective Jennifer Hyatt. She is the lead in this case. You can see Hyatt in WCCB Charlotte video from back in June, leading one of Malaya’s suspected killers, John Travis Turner, in to the police department to be booked.
The other suspect is Malaya’s aunt, Alisha Carlisle. Turner and Carlisle were dating, and both were babysitting Malaya the night she was abused. Hyatt says the day they were arrested, “They were quiet. They didn’t say a whole lot, and we didn’t say a whole lot. It was very important for everybody to keep their composure so that nothing got messed up and the case didn’t get compromised.”
The couple’s been behind bars for eight months now, awaiting trial. Both have fan pages on Facebook. He has twice the support she does and his page is regularly updated by a woman named Tina.
WCCB Charlotte asked Rowan County District Attorney Brandy Cook for a status update on this case. She ignored our phone calls and email.
We went back to the townhouse where Malaya took some of her last breaths. The Heun family has since moved out. The woman who lives here now with her children didn’t want to speak. Other neighbors did, one woman telling us, “I couldn’t live there.” And another woman saying, “It was just sad to me, because like I said, I have my own (child).”
Malaya’s mom Christy Heun talked with WCCB Charlotte about her life, one year later. She says, “My other kids help a lot. I know they need me. I know it won’t do ’em no good if I’m not here to take care of ’em, so they help a lot.” She looks back with this regret: “Yeah, I wish I wouldn’t have went to work that day. But I mean, I had to. I’m a single parent, mother of four, you know.”
Back at the Kannapolis Police Department, Detective Hyatt is still focused on Malaya’s sweet face, one year later. “It’s still not put away. I still work on it and I still think about it because when we get our day in court, I wanna make sure all of the Is are dotted and the Ts are crossed.”
Medical experts determined Malaya also had older injuries in various stages of healing. Alisha Carlisle and John Travis Turner maintain their innocence, but they have yet say who did kill Malaya, if not them. They have denied WCCB Charlotte’s requests for interviews.
