A Philadelphia foster mother and schoolteacher has been charged with murder in the death of the 10-year-old girl in her care, whose body was found late on Wednesday, November 4, in the trunk of a car at an apartment complex in Lindenwold, New Jersey, prosecutors said. Carprice Williams, 36, was arrested on Thursday, November 5, and is being held without bail. Investigators are now seeking the city's foster-placement records to establish how the child came to be placed in her home. In line with Awaaz Punjab's minor-safety rule, this report does not name the child.
Source: Oxygen — Nov. 6, 2026
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner announced the charges at a November 5 press conference alongside Wayne Jacobs, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Philadelphia Field Office. Williams faces seven charges in total: murder, endangering the welfare of a child, criminal use of a communication facility, possession of an instrument of crime, recklessly endangering another person, tampering with evidence, and abuse of a corpse, according to court records reviewed by Oxygen. Krasner said the case would be prosecuted vigorously, and noted that Williams had no criminal record. The charges are allegations; Williams has not been convicted and is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
Source: Oxygen — Nov. 6, 2026
Ten days missing
Prosecutors said the girl was last seen entering her West Philadelphia home on October 22. The home is on the 500 block of North Simpson Street, where she lived in foster care. Williams reported her missing on October 26, telling police the girl had not come home from school and was not answering her phone — the start of a search that ran for ten days across two states.
Source: News Beyond Detroit — NBC10 / Inquirer reporting, Nov. 7, 2026
Assistant District Attorney Ashley Toczylowski told the press conference that investigators recovered surveillance footage showing what appeared to be the child's body being carried out of the home in a bag at about 1:53 a.m. on October 26 — hours before she was reported missing — by someone other than Williams. A witness connected to the vehicle seen in the footage helped lead investigators to a different car in Lindenwold, around 15 miles from the West Philadelphia home, where they found the child late on November 4 at the Stonington Court Apartments in Camden County.
Source: News Beyond Detroit — Nov. 7, 2026
A preliminary postmortem examination by the New Jersey Medical Examiner's Office found the child died from blunt force trauma, and her death was ruled a homicide, Toczylowski said. An arrest report obtained by NBC10 says two children who had visited the home told police they had seen Williams hit the child with a cord and punish her by withholding food and water. Those accounts are part of the allegations investigators are putting before the court; they have not been tested at trial.
Source: Oxygen / NBC10 via News Beyond Detroit — Nov. 6-7, 2026
CBS Philadelphia reported that investigators plan to subpoena the city's Department of Human Services for the child's placement records. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that a civil lawsuit involving a different child alleged that a review panel had recommended Williams never foster again after a 4-year-old in her care was hospitalized in 2021. That allegation, made in a lawsuit, has not been proven in court — but it is now at the centre of the public question in this case: what did the placement system know, and when?
A teacher, held without bail
Williams, 36, is a Philadelphia teacher as well as a foster mother. She was arraigned and ordered held without bail, and her next appearance is a preliminary hearing scheduled for November 23 in Philadelphia Municipal Court. It is unclear whether she has entered a plea, and her attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Oxygen reported. The Defender Association of Philadelphia, which represents her, declined to comment to the Inquirer. The investigation involved Philadelphia police, the FBI and New Jersey authorities, including the Camden County Prosecutor's Office.
Source: Oxygen — Nov. 6, 2026
Why this case reaches beyond one home
Foster care exists for one purpose: to keep a child safe when her own home cannot. When a child dies in the placement that was supposed to protect her — and when a lawsuit had already, on the Inquirer's reporting, carried a warning about that home — the case stops being only about one defendant and becomes a test of the vetting, monitoring and record-keeping of the whole system. Philadelphia's Department of Human Services places and oversees foster children across the city, including in the West Philadelphia neighbourhoods where many of the city's South Asian and Punjabi families also live and send their children to school. The subpoenaed records are expected to show what checks were made before this placement and what was known about the earlier allegation.
What happens next
The preliminary hearing on November 23 will test whether prosecutors have enough evidence to take the murder case to trial. Separately, the Department of Human Services records — sought by subpoena, on CBS Philadelphia's reporting — will show how the placement was approved and monitored, and whether the 2021 allegation reported by the Inquirer was on file. Investigators have not ruled out further developments in the case. Awaaz Punjab will report the hearing and any findings on the placement records.