A 60-year-old Virginia man has been charged for allegedly smothering a child after he found out she wasn’t his. He is also said to have admitted to bludgeoning his 24-year-old wife with a hammer.
On Tuesday, July 7, Gloucester County Sheriffs were called to a home on Aberdeen Creek Road, where they found Corena Chambers gravely wounded, and her infant daughter dead. Her husband was missing from the home; deputies tracked him down and arrested him on Wednesday night after finding his car parked at Wahrani Nature Trail, 30 miles away.
Dennis Chambers was charged with second-degree murder in the death of the child. He was also charged with malicious wounding after bludgeoning his 24-year-old wife with a hammer, police say.
According to court documents obtained by 10 On Your Side, Dennis Chambers admitted he had used a hammer to strike his wife in the head “between two and three times”, before using a cotton burping cloth to smother the five-month-old baby.
The documents show that family members and neighbors told investigators that Corena had been having several extramarital relationships with a number of men; and that she had recently told her husband that the baby was not his biological child.
A relative told the site Corena is now on a ventilator in hospital, fighting for her life.
One neighbor, who said he knew Chambers for 12 years, expressed disbelief he could do anything violent, but admitted he witnessed him acting strangely on the day of the killing.
“I noticed he kept running from the front door to the end of the house. So I said, Well, something is wrong. And a thought rang in my mind, I said to myself: ‘Oh God, I hope that baby is not dead’… Later I find out the baby is dead.”
He claimed the couple got married four years ago, and while they had disagreements, they never showed any sign of violence.
“I’m sorry for the baby, but I just can’t see that Dennis done anything,” the neighbor insisted.
“It would have to be proven to me, I’d have to see. But I guess time will tell what’s really happened.”
