Inset: Diane Natasha Mack (Highlands County Sheriff’s Office). Background: The home and garage where Diane Natasha Mack allegedly abused her adoptive daughter (Highlands County Sheriff’s Office/YouTube).
Deputies in Sebring, Florida, were called to a “horrific” crime scene on Friday that “no amount of law enforcement experience” could have ever prepared them for, according to police officials.
Diane Natasha Mack — a 34-year-old former Florida Department of Children and Families employee who worked as a guardian ad litem (GAL) — had phoned police to report the death of her 13-year-old adopted daughter after finding her “lying unresponsive” on a floor at their home in the Sun ‘n Lake of Sebring golf and recreation community early Friday at 12:19 a.m., per the Highland County Sheriff’s Office.
What authorities discovered there, according to Highlands County Sheriff Paul Blackman, they will not soon forget.
“This is one of the most disturbing crime scenes I have encountered in more than 30 years of law enforcement,” Blackman said Friday in a sheriff’s office video announcing Mack’s arrest on murder and child abuse charges. “There are no words I can say that can truly convey the nightmare that this child’s life must have been.”
Deputies allegedly found Mack’s daughter dead inside her home, wearing nothing but a diaper and showing “clear” signs of abuse and neglect, Blackman said. Mack initially told investigators she found the girl on Thursday morning, but then changed her time of discovery to around 3 p.m., according to the sheriff.
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“She was extremely emaciated and obviously malnourished,” Blackman said of Mack’s daughter. “Her body was covered in wounds in all stages of healing, including open lacerations that were clearly recently suffered.”
