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Woman In Doomsday Group Found Incompetent To Stand Trial In Deaths Of 2 Girls

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (CBS4/AP) — One of five members of a doomsday group charged in the deaths of two girls in Colorado has been found incompetent to stand trial.  The trial of Ika Eden of Jamaica was postponed indefinitely, the Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction reports.

 

ika eden
Ika Eden (credit: San Miguel County)

Eden, 54, also was found incompetent to serve as her own defense attorney during a recent hearing, San Miguel County officials said.

Eden — who has also used the names Carol Johnson and Carol Sutherland — pleaded not guilty to child abuse resulting in the deaths last summer of 10-year-old Makayla Roberts and her 8-year-old sister Hannah Marshall. Their decomposing bodies were found last September in a car on a farm near Norwood, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of Durango.

Investigators believe the group's spiritual leader, Madani Ceus of Haiti, ordered the girls kept in a car without food or water as the others awaited the apocalypse.

Nashika Bramble
Nashika Bramble (credit: San Miguel County)

The charge against Eden alleges she did nothing to help the children.

In July, Eden said she wanted to serve as her own attorney saying: "I plan to say what happened and why."

Ceus and the girls' mother, Nashika Bramble, have each pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder.

Frederick Blair, a 23-year-old man from Norwood, and Ashford Archer, a 50-year-old man from Haiti, are charged with fatal child abuse and acting as an accessory to a crime.

norwood children killed composite of four arrests 2 Women Charged With Murders Of Young Girls

(© Copyright 2018 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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