MARIETTA - Questions over Amber Wesley's possible involvement with another man and the paternity of her youngest child might have led to her death, police said.
"There was an argument concerning her relationship with another male," Washington County sheriff's Lt. Detective Brian Schuck said Thursday.
It was the first time police offered a possible motive for Wesley's death. The 21-year-old mother of two young children was found bound, strangled and wrapped in a blanket Tuesday afternoon in the bedroom of her mobile home at 85 Lang Farm Road.
Her live-in boyfriend, Noal Quattlebaum, 22, is charged with her death. He is expected to be arraigned at 1 p.m. today on murder charges in Marietta Municipal Court.
Schuck said Wesley recently filed a request for child support in Washington County Juvenile Court. He said it appears there is some question as to who fathered the youngest child. Wesley had two daughters, the youngest is almost 7 months old and the other is just under 2 years old. A DNA test was ordered, the results of which are pending.
The children are staying with Quattlebaum's parents in Waterford. Officials with Children Services are reviewing the situation, said Sheriff Larry Mincks.
"(Children Services) are working on this as we speak," Mincks said. "The grandparents already kept the children four days a week, while (Wesley and Quattlebaum) worked."
Mincks said the couple worked at Influent, a telemarketing company near Reno.
On Thursday the sheriff's office also released the 911 calls placed by Felicia Quattlebaum, Noal's mother.
Police say after the murder, Noal Quattlebaum left his residence and went to his parents' home at 301 Main St. in Waterford.
On the recordings, a distraught Felicia Quattlebaum describes how her son explained the murder. She told the dispatcher she had snuck upstairs, away from her son, to place the 4:12 p.m. call.
"I have an emergency. I cannot talk loud," Felicia reported to the dispatcher.
"OK, go ahead," the dispatcher said.
"My son is at my house. He is suicidal. He accidentally killed his girlfriend. And if (someone) calls the law he is going to run. I don't know what to do," she said.
After providing the dispatcher with directions to her son's residence and to her home, Felicia Quattlebaum told police what she knew about the murder.
"He said they got into a fight. She hit him in the face with a coffee cup and he choked her. But I don't know all the details. I just know he's not in his right state of mind right now and I don't know what to do."
While Felicia Quattlebaum was providing directions to her home, she reminded the dispatcher that officers and an ambulance had been to her home earlier in the day.
Mincks said in an unrelated incident, around 11:30 a.m., officers responded to the Waterford residence on a report of a child in respiratory distress. The child was Wesley's 23-month-old, who was staying with Felicia and her husband, Mark.
"It was completely unrelated, but she was having some kind of breathing problem," Mincks said. "She was perfectly OK when we got there and they refused treatment (or transport to a hospital)."
Mincks said the timing of the incident was eerie.
"From what Noal has said, this happened about the same time he was strangling her mother," Mincks said.
Noal Quattlebaum was taken into custody at his parents' residence without incident.
Mincks said Quattlebaum remains on a suicide watch at the jail.
"Mental health (officials) have talked to him and cleared him, but we're still continuing to keep him in a holding cell by himself where he is being monitored," the sheriff said.
A funeral for Wesley is planned for Monday.
