Following his court appearance on Wednesday, new details emerged in the case of an Ohio man accused of wildly swinging a machete at a woman riding on the back of a motorbike.
Kenneth Wayne Brabant, 59, “became emotional” and “upset and apologetic” when he learnt 41-year-old Leigha Huff had died, Preble County Sheriff’s Office Captain Shane Hatfield testified in court, according to Dayton CBS affiliate WHIO.
According to investigators, he was so repentant that he drew a map for deputies to find the machete in the woods behind his home after cleaning and hiding it.
Law&Crime previously reported that Brabant was charged with murder, tampering with evidence, and assault in the case. On the night of June 22, Huff was riding on the back of a motorbike with another man on Upper Somers Road in Camden. Around the same time, Brabant’s daughter, who has not been identified, called 911.
“My ex is running up and down the road on his motorbike, revving it up, trying to get my dad to come out,” she said, according to WHIO audio. “My dad is outside.”
Minutes later, Huff and the man she was riding with drove down the dark road. Huff was suddenly struck in the leg with something, which later turned out to be a machete. “Oh my god, I’m hit,” the man she was with reported her saying.
Huff bled out before emergency medical services could treat her, according to authorities. It is unclear whether an ex-boyfriend of Brabant’s daughter was present that night. Authorities stated that neither Huff nor the man she was with knew Brabant or his daughter.
In court on Wednesday, Hatfield shed more light on what happened after Huff’s death. When he interviewed Brabant, the suspect allegedly apologised and admitted to striking her with the machete.
“He [had] seen the motorbike coming and swung,” Hatfield told WLWT, a Cincinnati NBC affiliate. So I asked him what he swung. He said, ‘That’s the bad part. So, what was it? “He claimed it was a machete.”
According to the outlet, Huff is remembered as a single mother who battled cancer for many years. “She was a very wonderful person, very charismatic,” Huff’s friend Jeremy Tucker told Dayton NBC affiliate WDTN. “She loved live music and stuff like that.”
“It was always coming back and going away,” Tucker told WLWT about the cancer. “She always survived through that and raised her son like an awesome mother would.”
Brabant is expected to appear in Common Pleas Court in the coming weeks.
