03-05-2017, 08:46 PM
Charise Walker was 5 years old when she was murdered by a neighbor.
"...members of the search party were in the woods, searching with flashlights. They spotted her clothes first, "hanging from a briar about twenty or thirty feet" from a, place where "the leaves and all [on the ground] had been torn up.
Note the amount of bleeding from this head injury.
"...members of the search party were in the woods, searching with flashlights. They spotted her clothes first, "hanging from a briar about twenty or thirty feet" from a, place where "the leaves and all [on the ground] had been torn up.
William Sharpe described her location:
She was kinda in a thicket like, with briars and bushes. . . . It looked like her clothes were thrown in and she was thrown in behind them.
At this point, she was still alive, although horribly injured. Danny Watts testified:
When I got to the woods there was about four or five men standing around the little girl. I got between them -- I got on my knees where she was at. She had blood running out of both ears. She had blood running out of her mouth and nose. She had been beaten up around the head. Her leg had a bone sticking up -- not sticking through the skin but it was sticking up, you could see a big lump there.
. . . I tried to keep the blood from running out of her ears. I kept wiping it. It was coming out of her mouth and nose. I kept wiping her, and the paramedics finally arrived.
Charise was taken to the hospital, but she died from her injuries. Dr. Larry Howard performed the autopsy. Her anus and her vagina had been penetrated by something consistent in size and shape with a male sex organ. Both the vaginal and the anal tracts were lacerated internally. Her leg was broken, and her face bore a pattern lesion that was "highly suggestive" of having been caused by a belt buckle. Her whole head had been subjected to "severe impact injury and her skull was fractured in two places." Dr. Howard testified that Charise died as the result of injuries to the head.
Pruitt was interrogated by law enforcement officers after his arrest. He admitted taking the girl into the woods and attempting to have sex with her but claimed that because of her small size he was unsuccessful. He admitted hitting her with his fist when she began screaming"Note the amount of bleeding from this head injury.