On Thursday, two Kingman parents and a man were arrested after a 16-year-old boy was discovered dead. According to Anita Mortensen of the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office, the teen’s parents, Amber-Leah Valentine and Jon Imes, called deputies on Feb. 25 to report that their son had fled the house. He’d been there the day before. Deputies were called to Anson Smith and Indian Canyon Road on Feb. 28 after the body of a teenage boy was discovered wrapped in a blanket behind a stone wall in the area. When deputies arrived at the scene, Mortensen said they had no idea it was the remains of a 16-year-old. “It’s a well-traveled area, so putting the body there was very strange.”
Valentine called the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office on Thursday to report that she had just released her 14-year-old daughter from the custody of her roommates Richard Pounds, 34, and Shioban Gujda, 39. According to investigators, Valentine and her daughter were taken to a hospital, where Valentine told deputies she and Imes had disposed of their son’s body behind a wall. When officers reported him missing, she told them she knew he was dead. Imes and Valentine were later arrested on a variety of charges, including abandonment and concealment of a dead body.
Investigators then interviewed Valentine’s 14-year-old daughter, who told them that Pounds had shot her in the eye with a BB gun and told deputies about other abuse she had suffered while living in the house. “Any call involving a child of any age is extremely disturbing,” Mortensen said. “Our deputies and detectives are fathers and mothers. They have their own children, and responding to calls like this is always extremely upsetting because someone could do or be in the same house as something like this happening to their own children.”
Pounds was taken into custody and charged with felony child abuse and aggravated assault. Gujda was interrogated and then released. The 16-year-body old’s was autopsied.
