Southern California mother charged with drowning 9-year-old daughter in bathtub

WESTMINSTER, Calif. (AP) - A Southern California woman was charged Tuesday with drowning her 9-year-old daughter in a bathtub where her decomposing body was found days later, prosecutors said.

Khadiyjah Pendergraph, 32, of Westminster, was arrested last Friday in a grocery store parking lot in Aliso Viejo — about 20 miles (32 kilometers) away — on the same day that the girl's body was found in their shared apartment, according to a statement from the Orange County District Attorney's Office.

The girl, identified by the office only as Victoria, had cerebral palsy and couldn't speak, prosecutors said.

“Words simply do not exist to express the utter heartbreak knowing this little girl could not even scream for help as her mother pushed her underwater and cut her life so tragically and so unnecessarily short,” District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in the statement.

Pendergraph was charged with a count of murder and could face a sentence of 25 years to life in state prison if convicted. She made her first court appearance Tuesday but did not enter a plea, although her defense was assigned to the public defender's office, the district attorney's office said. She remained jailed without bail.

Authorities didn’t mention a possible motive for the alleged killing.

The girl's father was divorced from Pendergraph. He had been scheduled to pick up his daughter on Thanksgiving, but when he went to his ex-wife's apartment, he found the door locked and nobody answered, authorities said.

On Friday, he called police to report that his daughter was missing and that he had received “concerning messages" from Pendergraph, according to the statement from the district attorney's office. It didn't provide details about the messages.

The girl apparently was killed Nov. 19, five days before her body was discovered, prosecutors said.