A 28-year-old Vancouver man charged with murder in the March deaths of his girlfriend and her 7-year-old daughter is facing a new charge of raping a child after investigators matched evidence to his DNA profile.
Clark County Sheriff’s deputies and Vancouver police found the bodies of 27-year-old Meshay Melendez and her daughter, Layla Stewart, on March 22 after a passerby reported seeing two “life-sized mannequins” at the bottom of a Washougal embankment. The mother and daughter had gone missing 10 days earlier from Vancouver.
Melendez had been shot once in the left temple. Stewart had two gunshot wounds in her head and was found naked from the waist down, according to a probable cause affidavit.
Because Stewart was found partially naked, investigators swabbed her body for DNA evidence and sent the samples to the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab for analysis. The lab reported Oct. 18 that they had matched semen on the samples to Kirkland C. Warren’s DNA profile, the affidavit states.
Warren will be arraigned on the new charge Nov. 7 in Clark County Superior Court. He previously pleaded not guilty April 17 to charges of aggravated murder in Melendez’s and Stewart’s deaths.
Warren has been lodged in the Clark County Jail since Vancouver police arrested him March 21 as a person of interest in Melendez’s and Stewart’s disappearances.
Investigators found blood on the front and back seats of Warren’s 2021 Dodge Charger, along with two .22 shell casings, pants and underwear identified as Stewart’s and a purse containing Melendez’s driver’s license, according to a probable cause affidavit.
Police also found a .22 caliber pistol in the center console of Warren’s second car, a 2020 Hyundai Palisade. The brand of ammunition in the pistol matched the casings found inside his Dodge Charger, the affidavit states.
A friend of Melendez’s was the last known person to see her and her daughter on March 12. The friend told investigators Melendez and Warren arrived at her home about 5 a.m. that day and asked her to watch Stewart. They returned about three hours later. The friend went outside to check on Melendez, whom she said she found unconscious in the front seat of the car and naked from the waist down, according to a probable cause affidavit. The woman tried shaking Melendez, but she didn’t wake up.
Meanwhile, Warren went into the friend’s house and returned with Stewart. The friend said she watched Warren place Stewart in the backseat of his car before driving off, the affidavit states.
Police found Melendez’s car a week later in the 7800 block of Northeast Loowit Loop.
When investigators asked Warren at the Clark County Jail if he thought law enforcement had found Stewart and Melendez, Warren replied “I don’t know.”
Warren then added: “I hope not,” Vancouver Police Detective Dustin Goudschaal wrote in the affidavit.
Warren was previously arrested in December and accused of having threatened to murder Melendez and firing a gun inside her apartment in Vancouver’s Minnehaha neighborhood. He pleaded not guilty to charges of drive-by shooting, second-degree assault with a deadly weapon, gross misdemeanor harassment with bodily injury and two counts of fourth-degree assault.
Warren was ordered not to have contact with Melendez, according to a probable cause affidavit in that case. He was released from jail, without any GPS monitoring, on March 8. Melendez and Stewart went missing four days later.
Warren also faces a first-degree murder charge in Arkansas in the homicide of 57-year-old Curtis Urquhart, who was shot in the head and found in a ditch on Dec. 11, 2017. An Arkansas judge revoked Warren’s bond on March 17, issuing a fugitive warrant for his arrest.
Multnomah County prosecutors have also accused Warren of pilfering from two customer accounts at Portland’s Trailhead Credit Union where his wife, Monet Tyler-Warren, worked. Prosecutors allege most of the stolen $24,000 ended up in Melendez’s bank account. Tyler-Warren told investigators Warren had asked her to transfer the cash so he could “steal the money,” according to a probable cause affidavit. Warren has not been charged in the alleged bank theft.
