Kenyatta Ward was suffocated with a plastic bag by two of her friends – because they weren’t in the mood to drive her home, prosecutors say.
The 20-year-old Queens native’s body was discovered in a wooded area in Morrisville, Pa., just a few miles from her Trenton, N.J., home.
Amanda Dembowski, 19, and her boyfriend, Charles Poe, have been charged with the cold-blooded murder and are being held on $500,000 bail each.
Yesterday, a day after Kenyatta’s Brooklyn funeral, her distraught dad said his life has become a living hell.
“No parent ever expects to bury his child,” an emotional Tim Ward said from his Flushing home.
“At least I know she’s at peace now and she’s with her mother,” who died when Kenyatta was 3.
Ward said he collapsed in tears when he received the grim news of his daughter’s murder from Trenton cops.
“It was the worst. I started crying,” he said.
Kenyatta had moved to Trenton from Queens in June to be with her boyfriend but “I told her I didn’t think it was a good idea,” said Ward.
The events leading up to the slaying began Aug. 7, when Poe and Dembowski picked up Kenyatta and then stopped at a liquor store before returning to Poe’s Trenton home.
At the home, Poe and Dembowski boozed it up while Kenyatta and Poe’s house guest, Zoran Beal, smoked marijuana, according to Mercer County Assistant Prosecutor Tom Meidt.
Beal left and the other three fell asleep. By 7 p.m., Kenyatta had awakened and was itching for a ride home. But Poe and Dembowski didn’t feel like doing so.
A heated argument turned into a fierce fight during which the suspects handcuffed Kenyatta.
It was then that Poe ordered Dembowski to get a plastic bag to use to strangle Kenyatta, according to Dembowski’s statement.
But Kenyatta put up a desperate fight for her life, chewing through two plastic bags placed over her head.
The third bag proved too much for Kenyatta, who fell unconscious.
Poe then ordered Dembowski to keep the bag twisted tightly around the victim as he ran to get a sheet to dispose of the body.
Ward’s body was discovered near a Morrisville sewage plant on Aug. 9.
(p. 21 in metro)