JACKSONVILLE, Fla.—Cherish Perrywinkle's last moments caught on surveillance video, walking through a retail store with an older man believed to be the principal suspect in her disappearance.
The State Attorney's Office released hours of surveillance video and 911 calls on Wednesday related to the eight-year-old's death.
Donald Smith is accused in the sexual battery and murder of the child abducted from a Walmart in 2013.
In the surveillance footage you can see a man that resembles Smith walking with Cherish through a Northwest Jacksonville Walmart. The man had offered to buy her and her daughter clothes from Walmart earlier that evening.
Listen to the full released 911 calls in this case here.
At 11:18 p.m. on June 21, 2013 Rayne Perrywinkle - Cherish's mother - calls 911, frantically searching for her child who she says was last in the company of Smith.
I’m hoping he’s not raping her right now because I’ve had that done to me and it’s not fun,” Cherish’s mother, Rayne Perrywinkle said to the operator in the 911 recordings from the night her daughter went missing.
Perrywinkle described the van to the 911 operator as a white van with carpet inside but she couldn’t remember the licence plate number, according to the audio.
Smith was arrested less than 10 hours later when a police officer spotted Smith's white van driving on Interstate 95 near downtown.
Perrywinkle told police that Smith offered to buy the family hamburgers at the McDonald’s inside the Wal-Mart. Cherish went with him to get the food, and they did not return.
This criminal case is in front of a Duval County judge, still waiting to go to trial. Smith is charged with first-degree murder, kidnapping a child under the age of 13 years and sexual battery of a victim less than 12.
His legal team was in court earlier this month where his attorney filed a motion to continue his trial despite the recent developments in Florida's death penalty statute. A judge has changed Florida's death penalty law to pull power out of the judge's hands and place it with the jury.
The Florida Times-Union contributed to this report