Father of foster child who died speaks to KVUE
MURDERED TWO YEAR OLD WAS BEING “PROTECTED” BY CPS FROM HER POT-SMOKING (“Midnight Toking”) DAD
… Another baby protected to death while in the governments’ care…
A loving father lost custody of his little girl last November in Austin, Tx, after he admitted to.smoking marijuana at night after he put his child down for bedtime.
The precious little girl was not ill, or harmed by her fathers nightcap, nor was she exposed to the marijuana he smoked, yet this loving parent had his two year old baby girl taken by CPS and placed in foster care last fall.
At visits, the father noticed bruises on his daughter, and voiced his concerns for the welfare of his little girl at the foster home she’d been placed in. Those concerns went ignored by CPS.
Now this beautiful baby girl was MURDERED in foster care by an abusive foster mom who was in it for the money! Below is an article where the woman admits, after changing her story a few times, that she slammed the little two year old girl down on her head at least two times before losing her grip the third time, dropping the girl on her head. Causing her death.
The foster mother was angry at the little girl for waking up hungry and getting herself something to eat and some water to drink out of the kitchen. So she killed her.
This child was removed from her natural home because of a father’s recreational marijuana use. The same natural herb that is rapidly being decriminalized in many other U.S. states!! Really.
As an advocate for the foster children and families torn apart wrongly by the system, I have stated before, my stance, on the issue of drug use and CPS. I strongly believe that absent evidence of abuse or neglect, and absent injury or harm to the child,there should be no reason for the removal of that child from their natural home solely because of a parents’ drug use and/or drug addiction particularly if there is no reason to believe that the drug was never used in the presence of the child. If the use of the marijuana was kept outside the child’s awareness, smoked after bedtime, I do not agree with the removal of that child solely due to that recreational marijuana use if it truly had no deleterious effect on the child, and where there is no other sign of abuse or neglect, and no injury to the child!
If the social worker truly believes a parent has a drug problem.. there are plenty of outpatient rehabilitation programs available for the parent to receive help that the CPS worker could refer the parent to, while keeping the family unit in-tact.
Had an approach such a that been utilized in this situation, this baby girl would not have suffered abuse by the FOSTER PARENT and would not have been brutally and senselessly murdered! I also question the worker monitoring the visits who failed to investigate the signs of abuse that the father pointed out with obvious concern. What happened there?
What this is .. is a child welfare system failure at its worst!
I hope this case grinds deep into the minds of every cps worker. I hope this reminds them to rethink when they begin to needlessly remove a child from an abuse-free/neglect-free home where other in-home services are available.
CHILDREN ARE NOT A SOURCE OF INCOME …. THIS WOMAN, when convicted (seems inevitable since she’s already confessed though, technically, she is still innocent til proven guilty in the court of law) (supposedly) SHE DESERVES DEATH…(and in my opinion,a slow painful death)
It should be recorded and televised for foster parents to-be to watch in training class. Then maybe the “monsters to-be” who are getting into foster parenting to “earn an income” like this monster did.. will reconsider fostering and go get a JOB away from our children if they saw something REAL AND JUST being done about those who abuse and kill foster children!
God be with this baby girls’ family in this time of grief.
I hope this tragic loss changes something in the system, for change is so drastically needed.
May this little girls death not be in vain.
ROCKDALE POLICE: FOSTER MOTHER ADMITS SHE SLAMMED TWO YEAR OLD FOSTER CHILD ON HER HEAD
by ASHLEY GOUDEAU / KVUE News and Photojournalist ERIN COKER Bio | Email | Follow: @AshleyG_KVUE
ROCKDALE, Texas — Tucked away behind the trees in Rockdale, Texas is a normally quiet neighborhood, but the peace has been shattered.
“It shocked me. It really did,” said Lois Rash, who lives in Rockdale.
“It’s a shame. Never should have happened,” added neighbor Larry McAdams.
Their neighbor, 54-year-old Sherill Small is now charged with the murder of her foster daughter Alexandria Hill, better known as Alex.
Monday night, police, fire and EMS crews were called out to the Small home. Small, who was the only person home at the time, called and said the two-year-old wasn’t breathing.
Alex was taken to the hospital, then airlifted to the children’s hospital in Temple. Alex’s biological parents rushed to her side.
“When I got there, it was about 1:00 in the morning and I found out that Alex was in a coma,” said her father Joshua Hill.
Wednesday night Hill and Alex’s mother decided to take her off life support.
“There’s not words to describe trying to make that decision,” said Hill.
Back in Rockdale, police say Small’s story about what happened kept changing.
“Originally, Mrs. Small reported that the child was running backwards and had fallen and this is how she had received the injuries. Later, it changed to kind of we were playing ring-around-the-rosy and I was swinging her and she fell,” said Rockdale Police Chief Thomas Harris. “And at some point somebody had gotten information that she was supposed to have been riding a bicycle and fallen off.”
Chief Harris said things just didn’t add up.
“I mean a two year old child doesn’t run backwards and fall hard enough to get this type of an injury,” explained Harris.
Doctors say Alex had hemorrhaging in her brain and eyes. An autopsy shows she had blunt force trauma to the head.
Harris says Thursday morning, Small finally told them the truth.
“She had evidently been frustrated with the child all day long. She had… the child… had evidently gotten up before the Small’s did and she had went and got into some food and some water,” said Harris. “That is what Mrs. Small was initially upset with her about…. had made her stand in a dark room, according to our reports, for at least three-to-four hours, wouldn’t let her sit or anything.”
Then around 7:00 that night, the young child, so full of life, was knocked unconscious.
“She actually admitted that she had slung the child down on the floor,” said Harris.
Small told investigators she raised the toddler over her head and slung her down toward the floor twice.
“On the third time down she said she lost her grip and dropped the child. Slammed the child down on the floor,” explained Harris.
Harris says Small’s husband, who wasn’t home when the incident happened, became emotional and even cried when talking to police. But not Small.
“I did not see a whole lot of remorse. I think it’s more like a lot of times these people’s, they’re sorry that they’re in trouble. This is the sense that I get. It’s still about them, it’s not really remorse about the child. I never got that feeling,” added Harris.
The Small’s had another foster child who is eight-months-old. That child has been removed.
Police say neither Small or her husband had jobs, but were instead planning to foster between five and six children as a source of income.
Small is in the Milam County Jail. Her bond has been set at $100,000.
ROUND ROCK -- He never thought his visit with her Thursday, July 25 would be his last.
“We got to sit down at McDonalds and have lunch and play for a while,” said Round Rock resident Joshua Hill.
“She got a little 'Despicable Me 2' toy in her happy meal and she loved it. She kept climbing up in my lap and she fed me french fries.”
But on Monday night, Hill’s daughter Alexandria, or Alex as they liked to call her, was rushed to a Rockdale hospital with severe head injuries, then flown to Scott and White Children’s Emergency Hospital in Temple and immediately placed on life support.
Alex was living with foster parents after DFPS removed her from her parent's home last November for "neglectful supervision."
Hill admits they were smoking pot when their daughter was asleep.
“We never hurt our daughter. She was never sick, she was never in the hospital, and she never had any issues until she went into state care.”
For two months, Alex was placed in a home that Hill says was dangerous.
“She would come to visitation with bruises on her, and mold and mildew in her bag. It got to a point where I actually told CPS that they would have to have me arrested because I wouldn't let her go back."
In January, CPS placed her with Sherill Small in Rockdale, and Hill says things seemed safe there.
“They listened, they paid attention when we had concerns, they tried to keep us in the loop, but in the end, it wasn't enough."
Hill got the call Monday night that his daughter was in a Temple hospital.
“They wouldn't tell me what condition she was in or what was wrong or what had happened. The only thing they would tell me is I needed to be there. When I got there, I found out that Alex was in a coma."
For two days, they held out hope she would regain consciousness but on Wednesday night Alex was taken off life support.
Rockdale detectives say Small's explanation didn't match Alex’s injuries, so Thursday they arrested the foster mother on murder charges.
Hill says he was less than four months away from getting Alex back and now he'll never get the chance.
CPS removed another child from the foster home on Monday after Alex was rushed to the hospital.
Small’s bond is set at $100,000.
Officials with the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services tell KVUE they rely on private child placing agencies to perform background checks on all foster homes.
The agency in this case is called Texas Mentor and state records show 15 total deficiencies for the Austin branch of that agency over the past two years.
Four of those deficiencies were for failing to perform proper background checks on people who live in foster homes.
The state does not specify which homes were involved in those cases.
kvue.com