Pickering said he knew that when the rangers arrived that he would never be allowed to see her again, the affidavit says.
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– A Hernando County grandmother says child protective services in North Carolina failed her family after police say 6-year-old Lila Pickering died at the hands of her father Friday night.
He added something like, “She’s happier now…it’s what she wanted”.
The park rangers, who did not know that Lila had allegedly been taken, approached them to inform them that they were in a non-camping area.
According to the federal court documents, rangers spotted Pickering and Lila walking down a steep embankment on the shoulder of the roadway.
Seth Willis Pickering is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Lila Pickering, who was killed Friday along the Blue Ridge Parkway near mile marker 393, authorities said.
“Now they will never be able to take her away from me”, Pickering told them, according to an affidavit filed by an Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent. It said Lila had been placed in the home four weeks earlier by the Buncombe County Department of Health and Human Services.
Seth allegedly took Lila – who would have turned 7 in October – from her home in Florida previous year, moving with her to North Carolina and triggering the subsequent custody fight.
Then, out of nowhere, Pickering turned away and lunged at his daughter who was standing a few feet behind him.
Lila’s mother says she wants to see laws change nationwide so that no one has to hear “It’s out of our jurisdiction”.
The rangers drew their service weapons and observed Lila lying on the ground with a knife coming out of her chest. Ruh tried to resuscitate a child with a blade piercing her heart.
Speaking to detectives later, Seth Pickering said he killed his daughter because it was the only way to make her sleep and not cry for her father. When Pickering said yes, one asked why he had killed his daughter, according to the affidavit.
Court documents show Pickering and his estranged wife had been in a custody battle over the girl.
Those allegations are untrue, said Ashley Pickering. That’s why the FBI is investigating her death.
The custodian reported the girl missing to the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office. “We used to call her Rescue Ranger, because if somebody falls or something like that on the playground, she would want to go over and help them right away”. One of the rangers shouted, “Did you just stab her?” “She loved her daddy so much”, Ashley told the Citizen Times.
Investigators found two kitchen knife blocks in Pickering’s home in Leicester, N.C.; each block was missing one knife, according to the complaint. “She was a very happy-go-lucky little girl, despite the circumstances of her life”.
In 2015, he applied for and later won a restraining order against Ashley Pickering after alleging she threatened both him and the child.
A knife with a silver and black handle, decorated with an oval-shaped peg, was pulled from her body. But she also said Pickering was a doting father and that Lila idolized him.
The Associated Press left messages for the public defender who represented Pickering in a first court appearance.
Later, at the Buncombe County jail, Pickering told Buncombe County Det.
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Pickering is scheduled to appear before a federal judge next week, according to an online docket, which does not yet list a new attorney for Pickering.
