The Cobb County District Attorney is asking for the death penalty in a case of a stepfather accused of raping and killing a 14-year-old and burning the house to hide his crime.
Dafareya Hunter was arrested by a fugitive task force in Florida a month after escaping a house fire on Shadowridge Drive in Marietta. Hunter's stepdaughter was found dead in a bedroom on July 23.
His stepson was able to escape the fire through a window.
Rescuers knew immediately the fire wasn’t the cause of the girl’s death and quickly called the case a homicide investigation, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported.
The grand jury indictment, and the notice to seek the death penalty, indicates Hunter raped the teenager, stabbed her, then set the home on fire.
RELATED: Investigators search for clues in deadly Cobb fire
A witness told police Hunter was sitting in his car acting strangely before firefighters arrived.
“Crazy bent out of shape and upset, just crazy,” Robert McNelley said. “One of the police officers asked me where he was at and I said up there in his car.”
Cobb County District Attorney Vic Reynolds has never in his four years in office asked for the death penalty, but he told Channel 2 Action News the egregiousness of this case calls for the most severe penalty.
“I pray on these decisions,” Reynolds said. “And I came to the conclusion from a legal perspective and from a moral perspective that it was the appropriate thing to do.”
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