Coroner: Multiple stab wounds killed Kettering woman found in dumpster

KETTERING — A Kettering woman found in a dumpster behind an Aberdeen Avenue apartment complex died from multiple stab wounds, Montgomery County Coroner Dr. Kent Harshbarger announced Tuesday.

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Sierra Woodfork, 24, was found Saturday after a man going through the dumpster discovered her body and called 911.

Her death has been ruled a homicide.

Charges were filed against Terrel M. Ross, 37, of Dayton, on Tuesday in Kettering Municipal Court: murder, felonious assault, tampering with evidence and abuse of a corpse in Woodfork’s death. He will be arraigned Wednesday morning.

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Ross was taken into custody just before 8 p.m. Sunday at the St. Vincent de Paul Gateway Shelter in Dayton.

Michael Vanderburgh, St. Vincent de Paul executive director, said Ross was arrested as he was in the process of checking into the emergency shelter. He also said shelter records show that he had never been a guest there before.

Two of Woodfork’s friends said that Ross was her boyfriend, and that they are angry about what happened to her.

“She’s 24, she didn’t deserve that, she didn’t deserve to be thrown in the trash. Nobody deserves that. It’s just sad,” Woodfork’s friend Shannon Longstreath said.

She said that she hadn’t had as much contact with Woodfork since her friend moved from Dayton to Kettering, but said that her relationship with with Ross was not always a happy one.

“He’s very abusive and the type of man that ‘if I can’t have  you, nobody else can,’” Longstreath said.

Damon Harris said he used to date Woodfork several years ago and that he was aware she was dating Ross, a distant cousin of his. But he said he’d also heard rumblings that Woodfork was afraid that Ross might want to kill her. Whatever happened, he said he wants the truth to come out.

“She was a sweet girl, that didn’t have to happen the way it did like that,” Harris said. “I just want justice done.”

Even though Ross has not been convicted in a court of law and is to be presumed innocent, Harris said he has disowned Ross as a relative.

“After that, I don’t consider him anything,” Harris said.

Ross remains in the Montgomery County Jail, where he is being held on $1 million bond.