LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa. (TCN) — A 31-year-old man who was arrested in March for allegedly driving around with his mother’s dead body and covering it in trash is now facing murder charges in Maryland.
WGAL-TV reports prosecutors in Baltimore County, Maryland, are charging 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, on March 24 just before 3 p.m., officers went to a residence in the 100 block of Fruitville Pike in Penn Township and spoke with a woman who said her estranged brother, Kevin Ahn, was “outside the residence and ‘acting weird.'” Ahn is reportedly homeless and “not generally welcome at home.” He showed up driving his mother’s car, then 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 got closer to the vehicle, they reportedly noticed an “unresponsive person positioned across the rear seat and floor of the vehicle, partially covered in household goods.”
When the sister and her husband asked him about the body, he fled on foot as they called police. He was ultimately apprehended and charged with abuse of a corpse. Court documents cited by WGAL allege Kevin Ahn left a note on the car dashboard that read, “Mom is in car. I’m sorry. Please give her a funeral. My brain is fried. My mom lied, she gave me fake money from the N.A. so did my employees. I lost my mind. Forgive me. Please call my sister.”
A follow-up statement said the Lancaster County Coroner’s Office arrived at the scene and “found evidence of a suspicious death.” An autopsy confirmed the victim, Hyun Ahn, died from strangulation with a traumatic brain injury as a contributing factor. The coroner ruled her death a homicide.
Hyun Ahn lived in Maryland, but Kevin Ahn’s last known address was in Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania.
The Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement that an officer described Hyun Ahn’s body as being “covered in ‘garbage’ including miscellaneous boxes, fast-food wrappers, and a shoe.” She had been dead for about 30 to 40 hours before her body was discovered, and police believe she had been in the car for nearly that same amount of time.
Surveillance footage reportedly showed Kevin Ahn and his mother in the vehicle about 48 hours before investigators found her. He reportedly went into a store while Hyun Ahn stayed in the car.
Ahn’s attorney reportedly admitted that Ahn left his mother’s body in the car, but there was “no evidence of abuse.” The attorney claimed Ahn “covered the body out of ‘respect'” and requested a funeral. Ahn’s lawyer said “this display could have been an eccentricity, akin to dressing up a skeleton,” but Lancaster County prosecutors found it to be “an exceptionally strange argument.”