VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — Charged with abducting his two-year-old daughter and strangling the child’s mother, the case against DeAndre Dorsey, 28, will go to Virginia Beach Circuit Court.
Police issued an Amber Alert for the little girl last December after her mother, Justice Jackson, told police Dorsey snatched the child from her apartment.
A day later, the toddler was reunited with her mother unharmed.
Dorsey faces seven felony counts in a pair of incidents last November and December at the Diamond North apartment complex. It was in December that prosecutors say he abducted his two-year-old daughter.
Jackson testified Monday in Virginia Beach Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court that Dorsey strangled her, first in November at her apartment near Diamond Springs Road, and then again in December at that same location.
On Dec. 9, prosecutors said he took the child from her mother‘s bed after he choked her.
Surveillance video in court showed that Dorsey ran down an alleyway in between the apartment buildings with the little girl in his arms, with Jackson chasing them both.
The child and her mother were reunited the next day five hours away in Charlotte.
Jackson testified that Dorsey also strangled her after shoving her onto a couch in November and damaged her furniture and clothing with bleach and spray paint. Jackson claimed she had sole custody of the little girl beginning last August, but Dorsey’s attorney said that Jackson never informed Dorsey of the custody order.
In a statement to WAVY afterward, defense attorney Diane Toscano said that “this was a disputed child custody situation rife with misunderstandings. No one should rush to judgment at this stage in the case.”