Over a dozen Hampton Roads children died from abuse in 2010

On Thursday, the Hampton Roads Regional Child Fatality Review Team released a grim report detailing the deaths of 16 children from Hampton Roads who died from abuse last year. A total of 44 children died from abuse across Virginia in 2010.

Among those deaths, half were the result of neglect, while most of the others were the result of head trauma.

The following crimes are but a few of the worst which occurred against children in Hampton Roads in 2010:

-In July, Newport News police arrested Darius Brown, 22, and charged him with the murder of his girlfriend’s 17-month-old son. He was watching the little boy while his mother was at work.

According to the arrest warrant, Brown called 911 and when officers arrived at the Aqua Vista Apartments, they found the child ”lying face up on the bed, unresponsive, cold to the touch and had no pulse.”

Brown told police that the child became “unsteady on his feet, falling asleep and not being able to stay awake.”

Police said there were obvious injuries on the boy’s tiny body. The cause of death was listed as head trauma and blunt force abdominal trauma.

According to an affidavit, he had “several overlapping, human bite marks on his upper torso to include the stomach, chest and diaphragm area, as well as his legs and back.”

The toddler also had wounds which appeared to have been sustained from a “clamping device with teeth.”

While court documents indicated Brown refused to answer the officer’s question, as to when he last saw the child, the following disturbing events were recorded in the report: [Brown] “had taken videos of the child…showing how the child had been acting and was insistent that Officer T.E. Byers review them. Officer T.E. Byers observed the videos depicting the child, J.G. 01-29-2009 unsteady on his feet and falling to the ground. Officer T.E. Byers continued watching the videos and the condition of child, J.G. 01-29-2009 to worsen with each video.”

The video was taken on Brown’s cell phone.

The boy’s 5-year-old sister was also home at the time, and told police she saw “Darius punch, kick and bite Jireh.” The girl was unhurt.

-In May, Newport News police arrested Julia Leanna Tomlin, 25, and Justin Samuel Jones, 28, and charged them with felony child neglect, after having found their 1-year-old with untreated burns on her back, shoulders and arms.

According to police, the little girl was actually placed on the stove, and fell on one of the burners. The girl’s injuries went untreated for a week.

All five of the couple’s children were remanded to the custody of Child Protective Services.

-In April, Heaven Smith was sentenced to 17 years in prison for starving her 10-month-old twin daughters, one of whom died as a result of the severe neglect.

Smith was sentenced after pleading guilty in March 2010 to murder and child neglect. Her husband, Corey Bryant, a Norfolk-based sailor, was already serving a 15-year sentence for his role in the crime.

In April 2008, Miracle Grace, starved to death. Her sister, Heaven Lee Anna, survived the ordeal, requiring months of hospitalization.

Rather than hire a baby sitter, Smith and her husband restrained the two little girls in infant seats and left them alone while they went to work. When paramedics saw the girls, they found both in respiratory distress, and their tiny bodies covered from head-to-toe in bloody rashes.

According to court documents, the children suffered from malnutrition and dehydration for months.

-In January, Jathiya Wooden, 28, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the starvation/dehydration death of her 4-year-old daughter, Tamera.

Around 4:00 p.m., on Aug. 30, 2008, Wooden decided to punish her daughter for wetting the bed by placing her in a corner of the apartment she shared with her live-in boyfriend. She stacked furniture around the child so that she could not leave.

Already terribly underweight and suffering from dehydration, little Tamera was unable to even sit down in her makeshift jail cell.

Around 2:00 a.m. (10 hours later), Tamera began beating on the wall and screaming for her mother to let her out. Wooden responded to her daughter’s cries by beating her for several minutes with an umbrella.

It was not until 2:00 p.m. the following day, a full 22 hours after pinning her daughter in a corner that Wooden discovered Tamera was dead. Apparently, her boyfriend, Troy Edwards, sat for hours playing video games, while the girl‘s lifeless body lie only feet away.

Rather than reporting the girl’s death, Wooden and Edwards shoved her body into a closet. Wooden then called the police and claimed that her daughter ran away from a nearby playground and was now missing.

Of course, it did not take long for the pair’s story to unravel.

Wooden told police that around 9:00 a.m., she screamed at her daughter to wake up. However, she did not investigate when the girl failed to respond.

According to court documents, Wooden said: “I thought she was just playing, like she was just mad or something, she was just trying to be smart, probably one of her games she was playing.”

Wooden continued: “If I knew I was hitting her somewhere that could have killed her I would have never done it, but it was in the middle of the night, and it was dark, and I didn't know.”

The girl’s autopsy results showed that she died from malnutrition and dehydration, her little body simply shut down after being forced to stand for hours. She was also covered in bruises, with many of the wounds perfectly matching the tip of Wooden’s umbrella.

The 4-year-old weighed only 26 pounds.

Wooden had been convicted of child abuse in the past, and though she has six children, only Tamera and her infant daughter were living with her at the time. Two of the children lived with their father.

Another child was taken from Wooden and lives with her mother.

Prior to the child’s death, Tamera’s paternal grandmother filed a complaint with local child protective services against Wooden. However, no investigation was ever conducted.

Her boyfriend, Edwards, also pleaded guilty to murder and child-neglect charges.

 

 

 

 

 

Powered By iWebRSS.comparticipate in immigration news polls