‘So evil’: Parents respond to 3-year-old’s killing in Las Vegas after hearing
The anguished parents of a 3-year-old girl who was stabbed to death talked about their loss Thursday after the woman accused in the killing appeared briefly in court.
Marketta Phillips, 41, faces a charge of open murder in connection with the Wednesday killing of the girl identified by her mother as Journei Ross.
Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Suzan Baucum said she found probable cause for Phillips’ arrest and would hold her without bail.
“Why is this world so evil?” asked the child’s mother, Phalan Whitson, after Phillips made her initial appearance in court. “She needs to be put away.”
Whitson and her child’s father shared custody, she said, but she did not know Phillips. She last saw her daughter Monday morning. Journei was “on the spectrum” and nonverbal, according to her mother, but communicated through music and sign language.
“She didn’t deserve this,” said Jeremy Ross, the child’s father. “She was defenseless. She deserved to live.”
Ross said he and Phillips had an on-again, off-again romantic relationship. He came home to find Phillips acting “out of it,” he said. He also found knives with blood on them, he said, and in another room, discovered his daughter on the bed. He called 911 and gave her CPR and chest compressions, he said.
“She watched Journei numerous times,” he said. “I didn’t know she was a crazy case.”
Metropolitan Police Department homicide Lt. Robert Price said police received a call around 3:30 a.m. Wednesday from a father who said a babysitter had just stabbed his daughter at a residence in the Villa Del Sol apartment complex.
At the apartment in the 4200 block of Channel 10 Drive, officers found the father and the girl, who had been stabbed multiple times. The girl was taken to the hospital, where she died.
Phillips fled on foot, according to police, who found her while searching the area.
Contact Noble Brigham at nbrigham@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BrighamNoble on X.
