BROUGHTON, Westmoreland — Police were last night searching for a Westmoreland man accused of brutally cutting the throat of his 10-year-old stepdaughter as she slept in her Broughton home Wednesday night.

Lance Rowe, a 28-year-old taxi operator of Amity, allegedly committed the foul act at about 7:45 pm, snuffing out the life of Kimberley Jackson after a heated confrontation with her mother, Michelle Drummond.

The child’s aunt, Simone Brown, who was in another room of the house when Rowe attempted to abduct her sister, gave the Observer a report of the incident.

According to Brown, after Rowe and Drummond arrived home at about 7:00 pm, they began to argue in one of the rooms of the four-bedroom house.

Rowe allegedly told Drummond to accompany him to his home, she refused and he attempted to force her to go with him allegedly at knifepoint.

But Drummond escaped, angering Rowe, who is reported to have attacked the sleeping child.

An obviously distraught Brown recalled that she had just left the TV room and was on her way to get a book to look up her Cash Pot numbers when she heard Kimberley scream.

“Me think say a duppy did a bother her or she did have a bad dream, so me go in the room and when me look me see Lance on top of her with a knife a saw her throat and Kimberley a bawl,” the grief-stricken woman told the Observer. “So me bawl out and turn on the light and same time him just finish (cut) her throat.”

She said that Rowe, by then sweaty and his eyes bloodshot, started to threaten and chase her. She ran down a nearby hill, calling for help. Rowe chased her half way down the hill before falling. That allowed her to escape and run back to the house.

“Him only run me down half way down the hill saying ‘come back. Anyhow you take it me a kill you tonight'” Brown said. “Me run go back up at the house and tell them fi lock up the house for Lance just kill Kimberley.”

She added that even when she was safely inside the house, Rowe lingered outside, demanding that she come out and be killed.

Other family members, who were summoned by the child’s mother who had successfully escaped, eventually arrived on the scene but by then Rowe had left in a waiting Toyota Corolla motorcar.

The dead girl’s uncle, Peter Drummond, was distraught as he begged the police for speedy action.

“I am grieved because she was my niece and she was very brilliant in school,” he said. “I am only asking for the quickest possible action from the police.”

Kimberly’s father, Bruce Jackson, got the news while at work in Orange Hill, hauling drinking water.

“I don’t know how somebody could be so cruel, so brutal, so insane,” he said. “I don’t know what to say, it is really beyond what words can (describe). This person really needs to be brought to justice.”