By JILL REILLY and DAILY MAIL REPORTER
Police arrest a 20-year-old man from Maine as he allegedly killed a 14-year-old girl in Brooklyn whose body was found naked and charred on a beach who admitted to killing her because he thought she was pregnant. Christian Ferdinand was arrested on Tuesday for the second degree murder of Shaniesha Forbes who was found in early January on a Brooklyn beach having been burned. The New York Post reports that Ferdinand was dating the 14-year-old girl and that he suffocated her in his Brooklyn apartment.
He then kept the body there for anywhere between one and three days before putting it in a suitcase and dumping it on Gerritsen Beach. He tried to get rid of the evidence by setting fire to the suitcase, but a passerby spotted it on Sunday, three days after she disappeared. The Post reports that he was discovered in Maine after fleeing there following the murder. He was then driven back to Brooklyn by police and is currently being held int he 63rd precinct. The investigation is not over yet as police are now taking samples of the floorboards from his former apartment for evidence.
It is unclear what, if any, connection Ferdinand had to Forbes, who was a student at the Academy of Young Writers in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Newsday reports that she died of 'homicidal asphyxiation' which can include suffocation and smothering. She disappeared as she was on her way to school on January 6. Three days after she disappeared, a passerby discovered her naked, burned and partially buried body in the sand in Gravesend, four miles from her home. Shaniesha, who was the niece of an NYPD sergeant, had run away from home at least once before her disappearance, according to sources.
The body of the Academy for Young Writers freshman was found near the remnants of a bonfire and some beer, police sources told The New York Post. Her legs, arms and hands were burned, but investigators said they do not believe the fire killed her because there was no smoke in her lungs. An unidentified law enforcement source told the Post that the deceased girl was the niece of an NYPD sergeant.
The schoolgirl's friends said she had recently suffered at the hands of school bullies. 'Almost every day in science class, they would ask her the same questions . . . like why she would wear the same weave over and over again,' her friend Tanasha Searls, 14, told the newspaper. 'I felt it was wrong for them to do. She was a really sweet person.' Another friend, Jonathan Ho, 16, said the teenager, who vanished on her way to school, had a boyfriend and had relationship troubles.
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