North Carolina Dad ‘Strangled And Slit His 15-Year-Old Daughter’s Throat While She Was Visiting For The Weekend’

His job was to protect and love her.

But Joshua Burgess, 32, of Wesley Chapel, North Carolina, allegedly murdered his 15-year-old daughter, Zaria. 

Details of the horrific crime were read out in court Monday. Burgess reportedly turned himself into police and confessed to the shocking crime.

The accused man walked into the Union County Sheriff’s office at around 9.30am on Sunday.

He confessed to dispatchers that he’d killed his teenage daughter, Zaria Burgess, of Monroe, North Carolina. The murder of the teen girl happened inside his home on Hampton Meadows Road, according to WSOC-TV.

After Zaria had come to visit her dad for the weekend, he allegedly strangled her and slit her throat. 

As Burgess made his first appearance in front of the judge, there was a collective gasp inside the courtroom when details of his reported crime were read out. This according to Channel 9 reporter Tina Terry.

However authorities have not yet revealed what led up to the horrific crime.

Meanwhile Zaria’s grieving family say she was a sweet teen who loved her family.

“She was the type of kid to come in a room come or in a house and say, ‘Hey everybody!’ Just wanting to make everybody smile,” her cousin, Dytaysha Wadsworth told WSOC-TV.  

“She was so young and nobody deserves to leave this world like that, especially by someone they thought was gonna protect them and be there for them.”

Union County Sheriff spokesman Tony Underwood told reporters that Zaria’s murder was “just pure evil.”