Missing Sumter girl's blood found in apartment with slain mother

The blood of a missing 5-year-old presumed by authorities to be dead after her mother was found slain in their Lantana Apartments home was collected at the scene.
Five warrants obtained by The Sumter Item for Daunte Maurice Johnson, 28, detail what Sumter Police Department officers found in the apartment on Carolina Avenue on Aug. 5 and what Johnson reportedly said happened.
Sumter Police Chief Russell Roark said during a news conference Aug. 26 in which he announced additional charges against Johnson that forensic evidence from the scene led to the determination that Nevaeh Adams was killed “along with” her mother, Sharee Bradley, 29, inside the family’s home.
He would not elaborate at the time on what type of forensic evidence that was, saying there was an “extensive gathering,” but an arrest warrant signed by Judge Bryan Keith Griffin on Aug. 26 states “blood evidence collected at the scene and analyzed by SLED was found to belong to both the victim as well as her mother.”
Johnson, who now faces two counts of murder, two counts of possession of a weapon during a violent crime and one count of possession of a stolen vehicle, is said to have told police he killed both Bradley and Adams, leaving the mother in the apartment while disposing of the child’s body in a Dumpster at the apartment complex.
With the City of Sumter collecting garbage at the complex between the time Bradley died and Johnson was arrested, investigators and city sanitation employees searched through 230 tons of waste at two county landfills (Sumter and Richland) for the girl’s body to no avail.
Arrest warrants say Bradley was beaten, stabbed and killed with a large folding knife. Roark had also not specified whether a weapon was found, but the warrants say law enforcement has the knife.
Her autopsy showed she died of sharp- and blunt-force injuries to the head and neck.
“The dead body of [Bradley] was discovered in the apartment, bloody and wrapped up in a large rug with apparent compromise to the integrity of her face and skull,” the original Aug. 7 warrant charging Johnson with murder states.
One of the warrants signed on Aug. 26 says the girl was killed by stab wounds.
The possession of a stolen vehicle warrant says police think Johnson was in Sumter to sell a red 2007 Toyota Camry that he is accused of stealing from Aaliyah Stanley in St. Louis after killing her. The warrant claims Johnson “shot and killed” the Missouri woman on June 23.
The vehicle was found on Maney Street in Sumter on Aug. 6.
“The defendant admitted to stealing the vehicle, traveling to Sumter and selling said vehicle,” the warrant states. Johnson was wanted in Missouri in connected to Stanley’s homicide.
Johnson, whose address on the warrants is in Charlotte but is considered transient by the police department, remains in the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office Detention Center, where he awaits a hearing for a judge to determine if there is probable cause to move the case forward with a jury trial.