Ashley Zhao: The Truth Behind The Salt Container Child Murder

True crime is always disturbing but when it involves kids, even more so, and recently news arrived about Ashley Zhao, 5, who disappeared from the family restaurant in Jackson Township, near North Canton, Ohio. It happened in 2017, and new updates reveal a lot of anger about it.

The Case From 2017

On the Law&Crime Network this weekend, the video basically brought footage from the first report, the investigation, and the outcome. There was some commentary credited to WION, but true crime folks didn’t need a commentary to feel very angry about the murder of Ashley Zhao.

In the video, it started off with a police officer talking with Ashley’s mom and dad, Mingming Chen and Liang Zhao. Ashley had a sister as well, and the police officer told the parents that he had spoken with the other child, Jo-Jo. She’d told him, “Mommy and daddy don’t want me to tell you what happened.”

The 911 Call

Next, the video showed the transcript from the 911 call made by Liang Zhao. In it, he claimed that he and his wife, who ran the Ang’s Asian Cuisine restaurant, were really busy. No other workers assisted. Later, he fetched the older child from school. Meanwhile Ashley Zhao took a nap in a little room. According to his version, she must have wandered off. But it turned out to be a huge lie.

Per WKYC, “Ashley Zhao was killed by her mother, Mingming Chen.” As the video played out, true crime followers became exceptionally angry. After all, they saw the mother telling the cops she hadn’t enough hands to see to her daughter while she was at work. Then, she talked about her child “pooping” in her diaper.

Murdered Over Poor Potty Training

Well, the tragic facts showed that she grew irritated about the poop and hit her daughter’s head really hard. That happened at home. Then, after she died, the couple picked up the other child to witness that she saw her sister. Then, they took the body to the restaurant and stuffed her body “inside a salt container in the restaurant freezer to reduce the stench.”

The report by Liang Zhao on the 911 call only happened 12 hours later. Big searches were mobilized because it seemed that Ashley wandering off could have had some merit. However, good detective work eventually revealed the truth of a brutal murder.

If you don’t know, Mingming Chen went with a plea and landed up with a sentence of 22 years. Meanwhile, her husband, who hid the abuse, “received a 12-year sentence on charges of obstructing justice and corpse abuse.”

Viewers Vent In The Comments

Although the crime was closed in 2018, the reminder made true crime fans vent with fury. In the comments section, one of them wrote:

They only cared about JoJo, and now JoJo doesn’t have a mother, father, or sister anymore. After watching his wife kill his daughter, the first thing he thought was, “I’m going to lose JoJo.” These two are pathetic. That poor baby didn’t deserve to be born to these disgusting people.

Here are a few more responses from the discussion:

• The father is such a coward. Watching the mother bash a 5 year old’s head on the ground.
• He was so worried about his wife’s fate in jail. Why did he not have that same worry about his 5 year old daughter.
• You can sense that Ming Ming is an evil, vile, abusive individual who tortured her daughter, then murdered her. It’s amazing how her English improved the longer she was interrogated. She is a master manipulator and deceiver. Then there is [Ashley’s] cowardly, poor excuse for a father, who did nothing to help or to protect his daughter in any way at all ever.

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