Crime & Safety

Girl's Family Reaches Custody Agreement

Extended family members of a little girl orphaned by violence said they have reached a mutual, private agreement to raise her with the people who love her.

Lauryn Egland will grow up with a family – her family – that loves her.

On Thursday afternoon, that family stood together and vowed that they would honor her, and each other, in the years that lie ahead.

The little girl’s extended family worked together to design a custody arrangement for Lauryn, 6, that will keep all of them involved in her life.

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“Both families have come to a mutual agreement for the custody of Lauryn, keeping Lauryn’s well-being the primary focus,” said family representative Charles Shermer.

As Shermer spoke outside Courtroom 4 of the Bucks County Courthouse, more than a dozen members of Lauryn’s extended family gathered behind him, some supporting each other with a hand or an arm around a shoulder.

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“I would like to stress that this was a peaceful agreement by both parties and both families have respect for each other,” Shermer said.

Shermer also said the family extended their “heartfelt thanks” to the community for their concerns about Lauryn’s well-being.

Police say Lauryn’s father, Leonard J. Egland, killed his estranged wife, Carrie, 36, her boyfriend Scott Allred, 40, and Allred’s son, 7, last weekend at the couple’s home in Chesterfield County, Virginia.

On Thursday, Chesterfield County Police Lt. Randy Horowitz said his department believes Lauryn was “outside the residence,” when her mother and the others were killed sometime late Friday night or early Saturday morning.

Police found Allred’s son Morgan in the downstairs hallway of the Eglands’ home, indicating to them that he was awake when he was killed, Horowitz said.

Police believe Egland, an Army captain posted at Fort Lee, Va., then drove to Bucks County with Lauryn and killed his widowed mother-in-law, Barbara Ruehl, 66, at her home in Buckingham.

Egland later dropped Lauryn off, physically unharmed, at the emergency room at St. Luke’s Hospital in Quakertown. Workers there tried to question him, but he pulled out a gun and fled.

During the ensuing manhunt, Egland , wounding a Doylestown Borough police officer and a Dublin Borough police officer. Neither wound was life-threatening.

Police from across Bucks County before finding him dead Sunday afternoon of a self-inflected gunshot wound.

Bucks County Judge Robert Mellon held a private hearing on Lauryn’s custody Wednesday, before the family came to its own mutual agreement on Thursday.


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