Houston activist Quanell X says suspect Derion Vence confessed to killing 4-year-old Maleah Davis in an accident in the apartment he shared with her mother, Brittany Bowens (inset).
Maleah has now been missing for over a month. She was last seen alive on April 30 outside her mother’s apartment. She was reported missing by Vence on Saturday, May 4. He told police he was carjacked by three Hispanic males who knocked him out and took the girl.
On Friday morning, Quanell X told reporters he spoke with Vence in jail where Vence expressed his remorse and confessed to killing the child in an accident.
He allegedly told Quanell he dumped the child’s body on the side of the road in Arkansas. Investigators are reportedly on their way to the location.
On Thursday, Quanell said he was no longer a spokesman for Bowens because she has not been truthful.
He said he didn’t think Brittany Bowens knows where her daughter is, but he believes she knows what happened to her daughter.
A reward for information leading to an arrest in the case has been increased to $27,000.
Vence was arrested on May 11 and charged with tampering with a human corpse. Houston police said they believe Maleah is dead.
Bowens contacted Quanell after a neighbor turned over security footage to police that shows Bowens was at home the last day Maleah was seen alive. Bowens had told police she didn’t see her daughter on April 30.
Quanell told KHOU 11 that he saw red flags after just two days on the job. The activist claimed sources in Bowens’ family told him troubling details about Maleah’s care.
“Ain’t no way in hell a parent with common sense would have handled this entire situation the way Brittany handled this entire situation,” Quanell said.
Quanell said he continued to represent Bowens in the hopes he would learn something useful to tell police.
“(She) said to me when we (were) riding in my car what she believed really happened to Maleah,” he told KHOU 11. “At that point, I knew what needed to be done. So I arranged to meet as quickly as I could with investigators at the highest level of this case and shared everything that we had learned and discovered.”
First pictures from the scene in Hope, AR as deputies search for Maleah Davis. @KSLA https://t.co/ljsY3Lnrda
— Blane Skiles (@BlaneSkiles) May 31, 2019
Photo by Eric Kayne/Getty Images
