Tag Archives: Malnourished

Child Exploitation, dehydration, Law Enforcement, Malnourished, Neglect, Physical Abuse

SKELETAL CHILD SAVED FROM BRINK OF DEATH IN HORRIFIC NEGLECT CASE, COPS SAY

.jpg photo of Wichita Falls Police BadgeSKELETAL CHILD SAVED FROM BRINK OF DEATH IN HORRIFIC NEGLECT CASE, COPS SAY

WICHITA FALLS, TX  –  When an exterminator entered room 124 at a Delux Inn in Wichita Falls, Texas, late last month, he thought he saw a skeleton lying in a pack-and-play crib.

But, according to a pair of probable cause affidavits filed in Wichita County Court, “When the head of the skeleton turned and faced the exterminator, he realized that the skeleton was a child who was alive.”

The unidentified exterminator told his supervisor what he had seen, and the supervisor called police.  Now the child’s mother, 32-year-old Catherine Lynn Jarvey, is charged with two counts of injury to a child and exploitation of a child, both felonies. She remains jailed on $70,000 bond.

In the affidavits, which are attached to a warrant for Jarvey’s arrest, a detective from the Wichita Falls PD’s Juvenile and Crimes Against Children Units who responded to the scene for a welfare check during the early-morning hours of Sept. 21, said the 6-year-old boy, who weighed only 15 pounds, had “hair growing all over his body,” “could not extend his arms and legs,” and “did not let out any noises.”  His head was “misshapen,” his spine was severely curved, and the detective could see the child’s rib cage, “which was curved inward and askew,” the affidavits state.

The boy could not walk, talk, or sit up, and was not potty trained, according to the filings.

A small refrigerator in the room contained peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, pancakes, and sausages on a stick, as well as cans of Dr Pepper and Bud Light, the documents continue.  There were Capri Sun drinks, ramen noodles, canned food, fruit snacks, brownies, and breakfast cereal in a cabinet beneath the TV, and two bags of dog food beside the bathroom vanity.  Cops also found “numerous cans of Pediasure” baby formula, some of which had expired in 2020, as well as insulin, lancets, and syringes.

Responding officers took the 6-year-old to a local hospital for examination, where doctors found he weighed only 15 pounds—just 8 pounds above his birth weight and less than the 19 pounds he weighed at 18-months-old, according to the affidavits.  He was admitted to the pediatric ICU with severe malnutrition, dehydration, and failure to thrive.

The child hadn’t seen a doctor since 2019, which Jarvey blamed on transportation issues, the filings go on.  At the same time, a second child of Jarvey’s living with her seemed fine, had received redehygular medical checkups, and “looked to be average height and weight for a 10-year-old female,” according to the detective.  The dogs were also seemingly well cared for, the affidavits state.

Kevin Thomas, the children’s father, shares custody with Jarvey, according to unrelated court records.  He told The Daily Beast on Wednesday that he hasn’t seen Jarvey in more than a year, and said they haven’t been together in more than three years.

“I don’t know what she was doing,” said Thomas, who explained he is following developments in the case on television.  “I’m still trying to get my kids back.  I’ve been trying to find them for about a year now. I hadn’t been able to find them until I heard about what was going on.”

Hospital staff said the 6-year-old was near-death, and that his was among the most appalling cases they had ever witnessed.

“| see patients for neglect every day,” Dr. Elizabeth Peeler of the Cook Children’s Medical Center C.A.R.E. Team in Fort Worth told cops, saying the child was a “near fatality,” according to the affidavits.  “This is one of the worst I’ve ever seen.  This is really egregious.”

Jarvey, who remains detained, was unable to be reached.  In an email, court-appointed lawyer S. Aaron Holland declined to comment.

The boy, whose name The Daily Beast is aware of but withholding, hadn’t eaten for as many as 48 hours when he was rescued, emergency room staff believed.  Jarvey told detectives that her son had been diagnosed with multiple disorders, including alobar holoprosencephaly, hydrocephalus, pectus excavatum, and scoliosis.

Jarvey, the filings add, told officers that “she is used to having CPS and law enforcement called after people see [her son] because his appearance is so abnormal.”  She also allegedly said she missed her son’s feeding times that day because “things kept coming up,” such as getting her daughter ready for a dental appointment.

“Catherine stated to Dr. Peeler and to [the detective] that the [child] was fine on 9/21/2022,” the affidavits say.  “Catherine stated that she did not believe that the [child] needed to go to the hospital.”

The child exploitation charge Jarvey is facing stems from $841 in monthly Social Security disability payments and $250 a month in food stamps, which were intended to be used for her son’s care and feeding.  Yet, according to court filings, Jarvey didn’t spend it on him.

Jarvey’s alleged neglect “resulted in a near fatality,” the affidavits state.  However, Jarvey’s boy is “showing the ability to gain weight and his medical condition is stabilizing.”

As of a week ago, the child weighs 17 pounds, 13 ounces “and is improving daily.”

Child Abuse, Good Parenting, Indifference, Law Enforcement, Neglect, Physical Abuse

Father, Mother Charged With Felony Child Abuse

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.jpg photo of Child Abuse graphic
Indifference will never stop Child Abuse

Dirty, injured boy asks neighbor for food;
parents charged with Child Abuse

WASHINGTON, DC  –  The parents of a 10-year-old boy face felony charges after their son knocked on a neighbor’s door to ask for food in Prince William County.

The boy was injured and was wearing dirty clothes, police said.

The neighbor, who lives on Aden Road in Nokesville, called police Tuesday afternoon.  Officers determined that the boy had left his home more than a mile away earlier in the day, Prince William County Police Officer Nathan Probus said.

The parents are accused of forcing their son to kneel on sharp objects for long periods of time and burning his hands on a hot stove as a way to punish him.

The boy was taken to a hospital, and was in the custody of Child Protective Services.

Walter Enrique Flores-Chiquillo, 35, and Barbara Margarita Ramirez Del Cid, 28, both of Nokesville, were arrested Wednesday on felony child abuse charges.  Both were being held without bond.

Additional charges were expected to be filed in the case, police said.

Child Abuse, Cruelty, Indifference, Murder, Neglect, StopChildAbuse

Whole Family Cried When Woman Sentenced

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.jpg photo of woman that starved Child to death.
Princess White, 22, pleaded guilty Thursday to a felony injury to a child charge.

Dallas mother gets life for starving baby who was too weak to cry when he died

Dallas, TX  –  A 22-year-old mother was sentenced to life in prison for starving her 7 1/2-month-old baby to death.

When Kary Sharpe died, he weighed ounces more than he did when he was born.

Too emaciated to lift his head or roll over, he likely didn’t even cry in the hours and days before he died of starvation Dec. 2, 2014.

Kary’s mother, Princess White, pleaded guilty Thursday to a felony injury to a child charge.

State District Judge Teresa Hawthorne — known for giving second chances — sentenced the woman to life in prison Friday.

Hawthorne frequently interjected during testimony to ask questions, often wondering what might have led White to neglect her baby.

The judge said she will never be able to get the image of baby Kary out of her mind — so thin that every rib in his body could be seen in his autopsy photos.

The skin around his belly and backside sagged where muscle and fat had once been.

Hawthorne said she often gives people second chances so they can get help to amend for their mistakes but couldn’t ignore “what you did by letting that baby die.”

“That poor child longed for nurture and food,” Hawthorne said.

White shouted “no!” after she was sentenced and was led back to a holding cell.  She could be heard wailing from inside the courtroom.

Her family threw themselves on the floor weeping outside the courtroom, and her mother said, “How could they give my baby life?”

White’s aunt, 24-year-old Kiara Hamlett, testified that she could tell Kary was small for his age but didn’t realize how emaciated he was until the day he died.

Hamlett and White’s sister lived with White and her three children.
“What the hell were you grown-ups doing in there?”  Hawthorne asked Hamlett.  “Is there anything you can say to me to help me understand why for two months nobody took care of this baby?”
Hamlett sniffed and hung her head.

“Do you not have an answer for me, ma’am?”  Hawthorne asked.
“No ma’am,” Hamlett responded.

Defense attorney Sindhu Alexander said White couldn’t understand that her baby could die.  Alexander asked the court for leniency.

“She was ill-equipped to deal with the exact situation she had,” Alexander said.

She said that White’s parenting skills worsened after the father of her three children went to prison, leaving her to work and care for the kids by herself.

“I don’t think Princess White realized if she didn’t take him to the doctor he could die,” Alexander said.

But prosecutor Eren Price said it’s pointless to waste time trying to figure out why a mother would let her baby starve to death.

She called White a liar and a manipulator.  White claimed that she had fed Kary and changed his diaper the day he died.  Medical records showed the child was wearing an “old, heavily saturated, foul-smelling diaper.”

And the autopsy report showed that Kary’s stomach was empty.  All that remained in his body was feces he was likely too weak to pass.

Price said as awful as it may sound, “it would have been more humane for her to put a bullet in his head.”

White was indicted in January 2015 on the injury to a child charge for “failing to provide adequate nutrition” and “failing to seek adequate medical care” for Kary.

Child Protective Services took custody of White’s two other children.  They are now in foster care.

After months in jail, White wrote Hawthorne, asking the judge to lower her bail.

“What they accusing me of I didn’t do it I love my kids,” White wrote. “I was a single mother struggle tryna make sure we had a place to stay and food to eat.”

She said that she had never been in trouble before, except for a time she was accused of stealing “pampers for my baby!!”

White signed the letter, “love Princess.”

On Thursday, prosecutor Eren Price showed the judge photos of Kary’s body.  His bones were protruding and his body was shrunken in comparison to his head.

Price compared those photos to undated pictures on White’s phone showing that Kary had once been healthy and well-fed, with rolls on his arms and legs, a round face and big brown eyes.

In some pictures he was grinning, wide-mouthed and toothless.

“If I didn’t know it was the same child, you couldn’t convince me,” said Dallas police Detective Chris Adams, a child-abuse detective who went to the hospital after Kary died.

He described the baby as “skin and bones.”  Kary was emaciated, with no muscle or fat on his tiny body.

White told police that Kary had trouble keeping down his bottles because he was lactose-intolerant.  She said she had fed him 8 ounces of soy milk the morning of his death, but police didn’t find any soy milk in the home, Adams said.

Dr. Suzanne Dakil, a pediatrician who specializes in child-abuse cases, said even babies who have trouble eating or keeping down their food wouldn’t be as emaciated as Kary was when he died.

When Price showed a photo of the baby when he was alive to Dakil, the pediatrician raised her eyebrows and asked, “That’s the same child?”


Price nodded.

Dakil looked back at a photo of Kary’s emaciated body and said, “That would’ve been slow suffering.”

Kary weighed about 6 pounds 9 ounces when he was born.  At a checkup when he was 3 months old, he was slightly underweight at 9 pounds.  At 7-1/2 months, when he died, he weighed 7 pounds.
Dakil described such starvation deaths of babies as rare.

“This is actively, passively letting a kid die right in front of you,” Dakil said.  “It’s not an act of minutes.  It’s weeks, months.”

If Kary had been taken to a hospital, she said, he could’ve been saved.  He would have gained weight, and his growth would have been that of a normal, healthy child.

And he would have turned 3 later this month.

Child Abuse, Cruelty, Good Parenting, Indifference, Law Enforcement, Physical Abuse

Children Locked Up And Starved 3 Months

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.jpg photo of house where Children were malnourished and beaten
Children were nearly starved to death and beaten.

Police:  Children Abused, locked in room found nearly starved to death

HALIFAX, PA  –  It is a horrible case of child abuse, alleged by authorities in Halifax, Pennsylvania.

They say for three months, three young children were locked in a room and abused to the point of near starvation.  A five-year-old child weighed only 23 pounds.  Now, the parents are behind bars facing numerous charges.

“One of the girls was, probably according to the doctor was about a week away from dying,” Dauphin County District Attorney Ed Marsico said.

The district attorney says the children found in this home, under the care of Brandi Weyant and Joshua Weyant, were nearly starved to death and beaten.

“They were locked in a room with no heat source, they were given no food we believe for the last few months, their weight was basically just skin and bone,” Marsico said.

The owner of this house, Sheila Herb, says she had no idea what was going on behind closed doors.

“They need to rot in jail,” Herb said.

According to court paperwork, the children told police they were locked in their room and couldn’t leave.  Investigators say the kids told them “they would have to pound on the wall to get someone to take them to the bathroom and they would urinate on themselves and on the bedroom floor when no one would come.”

“[There’s] mold and lice [and] bed bugs,” Herb said.  “You’re going to want to shower when you leave here.”

The court paperwork says “the victims were found to be extremely disheveled with dirt, animal hair, urine and feces in their clothing and encrusted into their skin.”

“Everything you open, there’s bugs running,” Herb said.

Inside the house, a man who says he lived there, didn’t want to go on camera.  He says he fed the kids each a single apple every morning. He says he didn’t know they were being abused.

“The pictures in this case were terrible,” Marsico said.  “To see these children, you knew that they were near death when you see the pictures.”

The DA says all three children are either still in the hospital or back in the hospital.  The parents are facing numerous charges, the most serious of which is aggravated assault.

“The aggravated assault is very similar to the attempted homicide charge, so the aggravated assault would probably encompass that,” Marsico said.

Both the homeowner and neighbors say they wish they would’ve known so they could’ve helped.

“Them little kids, why didn’t they just give them up instead of torturing them?”  neighbor Fred Anderson said.

The district attorney says animals in the home were fed and healthy while the children were starving.  Police say both Brandi and Joshua Weyant have denied abusing or neglecting the children.

Child Abuse, Good Parenting, Indifference, Parenting, Physical Abuse, StopChildAbuse

CA Child Found Dead In Closet

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.jpg photo of Mother arrested for Child Abuse
Veronica Aguilar, 39

Malnourished boy found dead in Echo Park closet was subject of earlier Child Abuse reports, LAPD says

Los Angeles, CA   –  When police arrived at his Echo Park home on Monday, the body of an 11-year-old boy was lying in a closet, wrapped in a blanket.

The boy had been dead for at least several hours, showed signs of physical abuse and appeared to be malnourished, officials said.

Authorities are now trying to determine the exact circumstances of the boy’s death and also whether officials missed warning signs of possible abuse in the home.

On Tuesday, officers with the LAPD’s Abused Child Section arrested the child’s mother, 39-year-old Veronica Aguilar, on suspicion of child endangerment resulting in death.

The Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services received reports of possible abuse regarding the boy at least three times between 2009 and 2012, said Capt. Julian Melendez, commanding officer of the LAPD’s Juvenile Division.

He did not have details of the Police Department’s response but added that any evidence of injury or sexual abuse would have triggered an investigation by Juvenile Division detectives.  He added that he did not believe any police investigation was ever launched.

Armand Montiel, a DCFS spokesman, said in an email that “the law does not allow us to confirm or deny whether we provided any services to this child or family.”

At about 2:15 p.m. Monday, police received a call from the child’s stepfather, Jose Pinzon, who said he had come home from work and his wife, Aguilar, told him the child was dead, Melendez said.

Pinzon told officers that he saw the boy in a closet in the home in the 2100 block of Santa Ynez Street and ran two blocks to a 7-Eleven on Sunset Boulevard to call police because his cellphone would not work in the house, Melendez said.

Officers met Pinzon there.  When they found the boy, he had been dead for some time and “had obvious signs of malnutrition and visible injuries,” Melendez said.

Police arrested Aguilar early Tuesday morning.  Pinzon was not arrested, Melendez said.

Aguilar has at least three other children, ages 14, 16 and 18, who were not at the home but were located and contacted by police, Melendez said.  They were taken to a police station, and the minors were released to DCFS, he said.

An autopsy on the boy’s body was expected to take place Wednesday, he said.

The child had not attended classes in the Los Angeles Unified School District since 2012 and was thought to have possibly been in Mexico for some time, Melendez said.  It was unclear whether the boy attended school in another district.

Aguilar is being held in lieu of $100,000 bail.

The death comes as the DCSF has been grappling with several high-profile cases of children being killed after social workers received allegations of child abuse.

In 2013, Gabriel Fernandez was beaten to death, allegedly by his mother and her boyfriend, even though authorities had numerous warnings of abuse in his home.

Gabriel was allegedly forced to eat cat feces, shot with BBs and locked in a cabinet at their Palmdale home.  The abuse of the 8-year-old boy went on for several months despite repeated reports to the Department of Children & Families Services and the Sheriff’s Department, records show.  The mother and her boyfriend are now both charged with murder and torture.

Four social workers have been charged with felony child abuse and falsifying records in connection with Gabriel’s killing.  Prosecutors alleged that they minimized his physical, mental and emotional injuries and allowed him to remain in the home.