At just 37 years old, Amanda Collins met a tragic end in May 2022. Her dead body was discovered days later in an Opa-locka canal, partially unclothed and in an advanced state of decomposition.
Over a year has passed since that grim day, and now Miami-Dade police have apprehended the man they believe to be responsible for her death – her then-boyfriend, who is now facing murder charges.
An arrest warrant reveals that Opa-locka police found Collins’ remains on May 5, after they were spotted floating in a canal near Burlington Street and Northwest 22nd Avenue.
She was found with her lower body wrapped in a white bed skirt sheet, and a bag covering her head.
Investigations revealed that Collins had been in an online relationship with Xavier West for two years before he moved in with her and her daughter in Port Richey, Pasco County, in March 2022.
During this period, Collins’ mother reported instances of extreme violence, including one incident where West allegedly smothered her daughter with a bedsheet.
On April 12, Collins’ mother decided to evict the couple. Amanda informed her mother that she was moving in with West in Miami-Dade County. Unfortunately, that would be the last communication she had with her daughter, as she vanished after April 30.
Surveillance footage from May 1, just after 11 p.m., captured two individuals unloading Collins’ body from a Toyota Corolla and discarding it in the canal. These individuals were later identified as West and 22-year-old Klauss Antony Moise.
According to the warrant, before disposing of the body, West rode a scooter to Moise’s residence in Opa-locka. He used Moise’s phone to make contact with another individual, resulting in a man and a woman arriving in the Corolla.
Moise informed investigators that the group went to West’s residence in Miami-Dade County’s Westview area, where they placed Collins’ lifeless body on the floor of a shed.
The woman told police that Moise paid her to transport an unknown item. While in the car with the man, she witnessed West and Moise placing the wrapped object in her trunk.
They then drove to the canal, where the object was disposed of. The man in the car corroborated the account, stating that he saw Moise and West remove the object from the trunk and head towards the canal.
After this grisly act, the four individuals returned to Moise’s residence and went their separate ways.
West was later apprehended in Pasco County on May 17, charged with domestic battery by strangulation. He was subsequently extradited to Miami-Dade County to face a second-degree murder charge.
As of Thursday afternoon, he remains in custody without bond at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center.
Moise was taken into custody in November 2022 on an accessory after the fact charge and later sentenced. According to prison records, he is currently on supervised release from the Florida state prison system.
