Atlantic City mother of two killed in ‘chronic abuse’ case, police say

🚔 Atlantic City woman charged with killing her intimate partner in brutal beating

🚔 Police say victim was repeatedly attacked with a broom, suffered chronic abuse

🚔 Victim’s two children now orphaned, family says

ATLANTIC CITY — A 22-year-old woman has been accused of brutally beating a 34-year-old victim so badly that she died from her injuries.

On Wednesday evening, Ceani Barnes, of Atlantic City, was charged with first-degree aggravated manslaughter in the killing of Christina Burdette, also from Atlantic City.

The morning of Oct. 11, Atlantic City police were called to a Sheridan Avenue apartment. Just after 10 a.m., officers found Burdette with visible injuries to her head and body, lying on the living room floor. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Family of the victim have said Burdette's two young children, ages 3 and 6, are now orphaned as their father previously died, 6ABC Action News reported.

Autopsy reveals chronic abuse and blunt force trauma

In addition to the defendant, two other adult women and two children of the victim were at the apartment. Police were initially told that Burdette showed up at the apartment at 2 a.m., wounded and with a bandage on her head.

An autopsy by the Southern Regional Medical Examiner's Office determined the death to be a homicide.

The victim suffered complications of multiple blunt force trauma injuries with “chronic abuse,” police said.

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Confession, charges, and tragic fallout for orphaned children

Police were later told by witnesses that Ceani Barnes had used a broom to beat Burdette more than once inside the apartment, including the day before her death.

Barnes admitted to one of the other adults that she smothered and killed Burdette, who was an “intimate partner,” according to paperwork submitted in the case.

Other members of the household said they tried to help Burdette, using gauze and bandages on injuries to her head, ears, and face.

"You would have thought, because she was so to herself and so angelic and her own little person, she would have died from old age," the victim's sister said in an interview with 6ABC Action News.

The victim's sister has been granted custody of Christina Burdette's two children, according to a GoFundMe campaign collecting donations to help support and provide for them.

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