{"id":256236,"date":"2025-11-01T21:39:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T21:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/256236\/"},"modified":"2025-11-01T21:39:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T21:39:09","slug":"man-charged-with-murder-over-womans-death-in-kearsley-hunter-valley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/256236\/","title":{"rendered":"Man charged with murder over woman\u2019s death in Kearsley, Hunter Valley"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A man has been charged with murder after a woman\u2019s body was found at a Hunter Valley home on Friday night following a suspected domestic violence incident.<\/p>\n<p>Christopher McLoughney, 37, will face court on Sunday after strike force detectives arrested him at a sporting club carpark in Bellbird, west of Newcastle, about 6.45pm on Saturday. Police allege he was in possession of a sawn-off shotgun.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Christopher McLoughney will face court charged with murder.\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/8269d882a895ac642801af8b26ba7628660af4beb658c05ccda25281db728206.jpeg\" height=\"390\" width=\"584\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Christopher McLoughney will face court charged with murder.Credit: Nine News<\/p>\n<p>The alarm was raised after a child walked 300 to 400 metres from a home on Ellalong Street in Kearsley, near Cessnock, to flag down passing motorists on Friday evening.<\/p>\n<p>Police then found the body of a 39-year-old woman with a gunshot wound when they attended the home about 7.30pm.<\/p>\n<p>Nine News identified the woman as Rhukaya Lake, McLoughney\u2019s partner. The pair lived together and had been in an intimate relationship since June.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Rhukaya Lake, 39, had lived around Cessnock for most of her life.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/5f70fd204dcb2b4cdff80bede0a1eb269bbf9da0abe10f725fd88f030655f075.jpeg\" height=\"390\" width=\"584\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Rhukaya Lake, 39, had lived around Cessnock for most of her life.Credit: Nine News<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s very sad. The mother had a lot of blood coming from her head,\u201d a neighbour told Nine News.<\/p>\n<p>Hunter Valley Police District Commander Superintendent Steve Laksa described the death as a \u201ctraumatic incident\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can only imagine the adverse impact this is going to have on community members and the family members,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man has been charged with murder after a woman\u2019s body was found at a Hunter Valley home&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256237,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-256236","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}