Killing of Ashley Zhao
2017 fatal beating of a 5-year-old girl in Ohio
Ashley Zhao (December 30, 2011 – January 9, 2017) was a 5-year-old Chinese American girl who was discovered dead in her family's restaurant in Jackson Township, Stark County, Ohio, U.S., on January 10, 2017. Her death sparked an investigation led by the local police department in cooperation with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Ming Ming Chen (born 1987/1988), Ashley's mother, was charged with her death and convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Ashley's father, Liang Zhao, was also tried and found guilty of obstructing justice and corpse abuse for assisting Chen in hiding the body. Chen and Zhao were sentenced to 22 and 12 years in prison respectively.
Missing persons report and discovery of body
On January 9, 2017, Ashley Zhao disappeared from Ang's Asian Cuisine, a restaurant owned by her parents. She was reported missing on the same day at around 9:00 PM. Her parents told the police that she may have "wandered out a back door".
On the morning of January 10, authorities issued a Statewide Endangered Child Alert for her.
On January 11, while searching the restaurant, police found her corpse "concealed" in the kitchen, close to the freezer.
Investigation and legal proceedings
Chen and Zhao were arrested for their daughter's death on January 11; at the Massillon Municipal Court, their bonds were set at $5 million each because the judge believed that they posed a flight risk.
“Killing of Ashley Zhao” enters the record as 2017 fatal beating of a 5-year-old girl in Ohio. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Killing, Ashley and Zhao can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Killing of Ashley Zhao” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.