Aliayah Lunsford’s sister: “I saw the strike with my own two eyes”

WESTON, W.Va. — The children knew what happened, but were too frightened to come forward in the immediate aftermath of Aliayah Lunsford’s death, Lewis County Prosecuting Attorney Christina Flanagan told jurors in Weston Monday.

The defense, meanwhile, simply asked jurors to keep an open mind throughout the entirety of the expected two week trial.

DC, an older sister of Aliayah Lunsford, testified that she saw Lena Lunsford strike Aliayah Lunsford with the slab of a wooden bedpost on the night of September 23, 2011.

“I saw the strike with my own two eyes,” she told the court Monday morning.

DC, who has since taken the name of her adoptive father, was nine at the time of the allegation. She’s now 15.

She told the court that when she went to bed, Aliayah Lunsford was still alive. She checked on her during the night, and said Aliayah was breathing.

By the morning of September 24, the three-year-old girl who had been the subject of a missing person’s search for five years, was non-responsive, DC said.

DC  also told the court that she saw Lena Lunsford conceal Aliayah’s body in a clothing hamper. She then said the entire family was taken by car to a rural area about 20 miles away called Vadis.

Lena Lunsford then left the family’s van with the hamper, DC said, and returned covered in dirt.

“It seemed like forever,” DC said during testimony.

DC said her mother asked the children to “promise that they wouldn’t tell anybody the events of what happened that day.”

“After everything was clean, we did the plan and then we called the police,” DC continued.

“I was afraid of making that promise, and that she would hurt us.”

At this point, Aliayah Lunsford’s remains still have not been recovered.

At one point, DC broke down crying during cross-examination with defense attorney Tom Dyer — specifically when he asked her to re-enact the events of September 23, 2011.

“To pretend I’m my mother hitting my baby sister with a wood slab on the head?” DC said through tears.

DC also said her mother “very heavily cleaned the house” and “that she seemed frenzied and worried” in the immediate aftermath of Aliayah’s disappearance.

DC also suggested that Lena had treated Aliayah much worse than the other children while she was alive.

“She was in trouble a lot and was made to drink salt water,” she said.

“I assumed it was because Lena was jealous of the relationship Aliayah held with her grandma.”

There were other signs that Aliayah was being singled out, DC said.

“Whenever we’d eat, she wasn’t allowed to eat at the same time. Sometimes she would get to eat after. Sometimes she would not.”

DC told her adoptive father about five years after Aliayah’s alleged disappearance, claiming she could no longer keep it a secret.

“I know where Aliayah is,” she recounted telling her adoptive father while they were out one day.

DC sister KC, 11 at the time of the allegation and now 17, is expected to testify Monday afternoon.

Alex Wiederspiel and Brittany Murray contributed to this story.