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Woman Tells Police She 'Did Not Do A Very Good Job' Cleaning Car She Shot Boyfriend In
Police say that Brook Lynn Lank shot and killed her boyfriend Anthony Lofton in a rental car but wasn't able to clean up afterwards.
A Pittsburgh woman was arrested on Monday after Allegheny County Police charged her with shooting her boyfriend.
Brook Lynn Lank, 24, was arrested and charged with homicide and abuse of a corpse in the death of Anthony Lofton, 22. She is being held at Allegheny County Jail without bail and is expected to appear in court on April 8, according to court documents.
On Sunday around 6:30 a.m., county officials were notified of a deceased male, later identified as Lofton, in Derby Alley near 3rd Street in McKees Rock — about seven miles northwest of Pittsburgh — they said in a statement. First responders discovered an adult male body with a gunshot wound to the head.
According to a review of the criminal complaint by local outlet TribLive, detectives were able to identify Lank's rental car — a burgundy Ford Taurus — using surveillance footage from McKees Rock, and used then used rental car agreement to identify her. The vehicle had a GPS locator which placed the car at an Econo Lodge on nearby Steubenville Pike, five miles west of where Lofton's body was found.
Investigators surveilled the motel and noted a number of people coming and going from one room. Eventually, the criminal complaint said, they pulled over a car in which Lank was a passenger.
People reported that authorities also noticed a man cleaning the interior of the Taurus in the parking lot of the motel. When he was stopped in his cleaning efforts by investigators, they saw blood stains on the front and rear passenger side of the car.
Lank allegedly told police in an interview she had been in a relationship with Lofton and that they had first gotten into a fight the night before his death, when she said Lofton threatened her with the gun and took her rental car, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Lank allegedly told police that, when Lofton returned, he asked her to drive him approximately 20 miles to McKeesport to make a drug deal, according to TribLive and the Post-Gazette. But, she allegedly said, as they were driving, they got in another fight and she pulled out Lofton’s gun and shot him in the head.
Police say she told them that, when she noticed he was still breathing and reaching for her, she shot him twice more, according to the newspaper. Then, she allegedly said that she panicked, threw the gun out the window and dumped Lofton's body in the alley in McKees Rock.
Lank allegedly told police that she returned to her Pittsburgh home to clean the car but “obviously did not do a very good job.”
A witness, Germell Phillips, allegedly told police that Lank had called him over the weekend and asked him for help and to go for a ride, the Post-Gazette reported. When she picked him up, he thought Lofton — whose body was still in the vehicle — was sleeping until Lank told him otherwise and told him the help she needed was in moving Lofton's body.
Police said the surveillance video they reviewed from Darby Alley showed a man removing a body from the burgundy Taurus around 6:00 a.m. on Sunday, according to Pittsburgh NBC affiliate WPXI. Phillips has not been charged with a crime, according to the Post-Gazette.
