Lancaster County, Pennsylvania – A 31-year-old man arrested in March for allegedly driving around with his mother’s dead body and covering it in trash is now charged with murder in Maryland.
WGAL-TV reports. Baltimore County, Maryland, prosecutors have charged Kevin Ahn with two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of first-degree assault. He is currently in custody in Pennsylvania.
According to the Northern Lancaster County Regional Police Department, officers responded to a residence in the 100 block of Fruitville Pike in Penn Township on March 24 just before 3 p.m. and spoke with a woman who stated that her estranged brother, Kevin Ahn, was “outside the residence and ‘acting weird.'” Ahn is allegedly homeless and “not generally welcome at home.” He arrived driving his mother’s car, and he and his sister got into an argument.
Police said he left and returned at 3:30 p.m. His sister and her husband “confronted” Ahn, but as they approached the vehicle, they allegedly noticed a “unresponsive person positioned across the rear seat and floor of the vehicle, partially covered in household goods.”
When the sister and her husband inquired about the body, he fled on foot while they called the police. He was eventually apprehended and charged with abuse of a corpse. According to court documents cited by WGAL, Kevin Ahn left a note on the car dashboard saying, “Mom is in the car.” I apologize. Please give her a funeral. My brain is fried. My mother lied; she gave me fake money from the N.A., as did my employees. I lost my mind. Excuse me. “Please call my sister.”
According to a follow-up statement, the Lancaster County Coroner’s Office arrived at the scene and “found evidence of a suspicious death.” An autopsy revealed that the victim, Hyun Ahn, died of strangulation with a traumatic brain injury as a contributing factor. The coroner declared her death a homicide.
Hyun Ahn lived in Maryland, while Kevin Ahn’s last known address was in Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania.
According to a statement from the Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office, an officer described Hyun Ahn’s body as “covered in ‘garbage’ including miscellaneous boxes, fast-food wrappers, and a shoe.” She had been dead for 30 to 40 hours before her body was discovered, and police believe she was in the car for nearly that long.
Surveillance footage reportedly captured Kevin Ahn and his mother in the vehicle about 48 hours before investigators discovered her. He reportedly entered a store while Hyun Ahn remained in the car.
Ahn’s attorney reportedly admitted that Ahn left his mother’s body in the car, but claimed there was “no evidence of abuse.” The attorney stated that Ahn “covered the body out of’respect'” and requested a funeral. Ahn’s lawyer stated that “this display could have been an eccentricity, akin to dressing up a skeleton,” but Lancaster County prosecutors deemed it “an exceptionally strange argument.”