Father Arrested in Puerto Rico After Missing Virginia Girl Found Dead in Suitcase on Train Tracks

Te’Myah and her father, Travis L. Plummer

[ad name=”HTML-68″] [wpedon id=”23995″ align=”left”]

JERSEY CITY, N.J. — Police identified the body of a girl found in a suitcase near train tracks in New Jersey as a missing girl from Virginia, according to a release from the Hudson County Prosecutor’s office.

The exact cause of Te’Myah Layauna Plummer’s death is still unclear, but police arrested her father in Puerto Rico. Travis Lamont Plummer was taken into custody without incident by FBI agents on April 19 and is currently awaiting extradition.

His daughter’s remains were found near the train tracks in Jersey City just after 12:30 p.m. on April 11. Authorities do not believe she died in New Jersey.

Virginia police issued a missing persons alert for Te’Myah and her 37-year-old father in March. At the time, Richmond, Va. detectives said they did not believe the father and daughter were in danger.

Virginia investigators contacted New Jersey authorities after learning about the gruesome discovery along the train tracks.

The child’s age was initially thought to be about 10 months old, according to a preliminary medical examiner’s report, but DNA testing at the FBI’s lab in Quantico, Virginia, determined her age to be closer to 2 years old.

Plummer has been charged with desecrating human remains, a second-degree crime.

Investigators are asking anyone with information in the case or anyone who remembers seeing something suspicious in the area where the baby was found to call the Hudson County, N.J. Prosecutor’s Homicide Unit at (201) 915-1345. Tips can be submitted anonymously here.

John F. McCarthy is a veteran journalist in the Caribbean, writing from the "Decision Space" where survival meets the surreal. His reporting steel was tempered by a lineage of legendary editors and broadcasters, including Ed Wynn Brant (The Bomb), Owen Eschenroder (Ann Arbor News), Lynelle Emanuel (BVI Beacon), and Charles Thanas (WSVI-TV). Alongside longtime colleague Kenneth C. "Casey" Clark, McCarthy has navigated the front lines of the territory’s history—from the 1997 volcanic "snow" to every major hurricane since Hugo. Known for leaning out of doorless helicopters to capture the "money shot," McCarthy now edits the V.I. Free Press, providing the essential link between the island's colonial past and its SpaceX future.