DAVIE COUNTY, N.C. — Deputies have arrested a 26-year-old man in Miami accused of murdering a woman who went missing while attending a religious camp in Iredell County. She was later found dead in a motel room along Interstate 40 in North Carolina, investigators said.
On Friday, authorities found Quincy Cheeks Hannah just outside Everglades National Park. They said he was in the vehicle authorities thought he left Mocksville, N.C. in.
He is facing murder charges for the death of 20-year-old Suzanne Kauffman.
According to the Davie County Sheriff’s Office, deputies were asked Monday to help two people find missing phones at a Days Inn on Yadkinville Road in Mocksville.
Deputies said they met with the callers and learned that several phones were missing, and were in Kauffman’s possession.
Officers learned that Kauffman was missing from a camp at Harmony Baptist Church and was in North Carolina to attend the camp. She was from Pennsylvania, deputies said.
The people who were looking for the phones -- and for Kauffman -- told investigators they had gotten an answer on one of the phones when they called it, and had been told to come to the Days Inn on I-40 to pick up the phones.
Deputies learned that whoever had the phones had found them spread out on the side of the road, near a KFC. The person had also found a key for an Acura -- the same make of car that Kauffman was known to be driving. Deputies then found her car in the back parking lot of the KFC on Yadkinville Road in Mocksville.
Upon further investigation, deputies found that Kauffman may have met a man named Quincy Hannah in Mocksville. That discovery led deputies back to the Days Inn, where they found Kauffman’s body in a room at the hotel.
The room had been rented by Hannah, deputies said.
Channel 9 reporter Dave Faherty spoke with some members of the camp Wednesday.
“We’re in shock,” said Titus Peachy, a relative. “No one planned for this or imagined that this would happen. So we’re in shock, but we’re encouraging each other.”
Employees at the motel said Hannah rented the room where Kauffman’s body was found.
“It’s just sad,” guest Diante Allison said. “She didn’t really get to live her life fully and it had to be cut short by someone and their ignorance.”
“I’d love to find him and get him back here, and we will prosecute him,” Davie County Sheriff J.D. Hartman said Wednesday.
The Davie County Sheriff’s Office is working with Florida authorities to extradite Hannah back to North Carolina, where he will be charged with murder.
Anyone with information on this case is asked to call the Sheriff’s Office at 336-751-6238, or email Sheriff@dcsonc.com. Tips can also be left here.
(WATCH BELOW: Longtime suspect charged in 1986 abduction, murder of missing 4-year-old South Carolina girl)
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