A 22-year-old Cherryvale man was in custody Tuesday night after being arrested in Independence in connection with the deaths of a Parsons woman and her three children.
David Cornelius Bennett Jr. was arrested in the Montgomery County seat for questioning in the investigation of the slayings earlier this week of Cami Umbarger and her three young children at her home in Parsons.
Further information was not available from authorities in Montgomery County on Tuesday night.
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Umbarger’s absence Monday morning at the Good Samaritan Society nursing home in Parsons raised immediate concerns among her co-workers.
“It wasn’t like her not to show up,” Joanna Wilson, the home’s administrator, told the Globe.
She said the nursing home staff began looking for the 29-year-old licensed practical nurse and soon called police to request that they check on her well-being.
Police went to Umbarger’s home on the north side of Parsons and apparently at first were unable to locate her or her three children. Neighbors reported being asked by officers whether they had seen her.
Authorities, who initially reported the family as missing, confirmed Tuesday that the four had been found dead.
Parsons police and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation have not said where the bodies were located or how the four died. But investigators were keeping North 25th Street between Clark and Stevens streets cordoned off Tuesday as crime scene technicians entered and exited the family’s bungalow-style home in the middle of the block.
All media inquiries were being referred to the Kansas attorney general’s office, which issued a terse news release stating that a 22-year-old suspect, David Cornelius Bennett Jr., of Cherryvale, was being sought for questioning in the investigation of the deaths.
The Montgomery County sheriff’s office issued an alert to Southeast Kansas residents early Tuesday afternoon to be on the lookout for Bennett, who reportedly had been spotted about 12:45 p.m. at 3176 W. Main St. in Independence, Kan.
He was described as being about 5 feet 5 inches tall, weighing 145 pounds, and wearing a ball cap and a black jacket with a purple hooded sweatshirt underneath.
Nancy Ohmart, an aunt of Umbarger’s and a teacher at College Heights Christian School in Joplin, Mo., said the family was told that police found the bodies of her niece and three children, 8-year-old Hollie Betts, 5-year-old Jaxon Betts and 4-year-old Averie Betts, in the home. Ohmart said family members have yet to be told how the victims were killed.
Ohmart said her niece apparently met Bennett about a month ago at a restaurant in Independence.
“This is a person she had befriended, but they were not dating,” Ohmart said.
She said Umbarger had been to her sister’s wedding shower Saturday in Wichita and is believed to have returned to Parsons afterward. She said the sister tried to call Umbarger on Sunday and was unable to reach her. Ohmart believes the sister filed a missing-person report either Sunday or Monday.
Umbarger’s father and stepmother live in Thayer, her birth mother in the Kansas City area. She had a large extended family and “a great big heart,” according to her aunt.
“She was a loving and compassionate person who trusted most people, and her children were that way too,” Ohmart said.
Wilson described Umbarger, who had worked at the nursing home in Parsons for about seven years, as “an excellent nurse” much loved by co-workers and residents alike.
“If you were sick, you’d want her as your nurse,” Wilson said. “It’s very hard for our staff and our residents right now.”
She said Umbarger’s children had more or less grown up around the nursing home.
“We all knew them — beautiful children,” she said.
She said Umbarger’s friends and co-workers were trying to organize a candlelight vigil to be conducted tonight outside the deceased family’s home.
