The DailyMail reports:
Adam Slater, 49, from Palm Desert, crashed his vehicle on Highway 74 in the Coachella Valley at around 9am on Wednesday morning, police said.
Authorities discovered his overturned car along Highway 74, around half an hour after reports of the initial stabbing outside Southwest Church.
The vehicle had come to rest several hundred feet from the road, according to authorities.
A male bystander allegedly intervened to free the young girl, Madalyn Payton Slater, from the car wreckage.
Slater then allegedly snatched his daughter from the Good Samaritan, before stabbing the man and fatally throwing his daughter over a steep cliff into the ravine.
‘Multiple witnesses saw the suspect take the child and throw her over a steep cliff into a ravine. The suspect then fled on foot into the canyon.’
Authorities detained Slater after a brief chase on foot, before recovering the daughter’s body.
Thirty minutes prior, Slater allegedly had stabbed his pregnant wife, Ashley Grome, 23, and left her for dead in an Indian Wells parking lot, police and relatives allege.
Investigators have described the alleged brutal attack as a ‘domestic violence incident’.
He is being held on $1 million bail pending his next court appearance scheduled for Monday morning.
Meanwhile, it has emerged that Slater is registered as a sex offender in California stemming from a 1995 conviction for sexual penetration of a victim with a foreign object by force.
Slater was released from prison after serving two years in that case.
Grome survived the incident and has set up a GoFundMe page to help cover her daughter’s funeral costs.
‘I am the mother of Madalyn Payton Slater, the one-year-old baby girl who was killed on May 6, 2020 by her father when he drove off of Highway 74 after beating and stabbing me, then leaving me to die in the Southwest Community Church parking lot,’ she wrote.
‘My daughter was the absolute love of my life and she meant everything and more to me.
Grome’s uncle, Chris Grome, told the station KESQ that his 23-year-old niece, who is six months pregnant with her second child, was stabbed multiple times, including in the stomach and throat, but she managed to fight Slater off.
According to her Facebook page, Grome and Slater got married in March 2018.
After the crash, Slater was taken to a hospital to be treated for injuries, then later booked into the Indio jail on three felony counts of second-degree murder, attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon.
He is being held on $1 million bail pending his next court appearance scheduled for Monday morning.
Meanwhile, it has emerged that Slater is registered as a sex offender in California stemming from a 1995 conviction for sexual penetration of a victim with a foreign object by force.
Slater was released from prison after serving two years in that case.
