The mother of a 6-year-old girl who died Friday after the police found her bruised and unconscious in a Bronx apartment has been charged with endangering the welfare of her two surviving children, the police said Sunday.
Lynija Eason, 26, has not been charged in the death of Jalayah Eason, whom police found unresponsive and with bruises on her wrists and torso. But her two other children, an 8-year-old boy and a 3-year-old girl, were removed from the home, according to a law enforcement official. Ms. Eason has been charged with two counts of child endangerment, the police said.
The cause of Jalayah’s death has not yet been determined, a spokeswoman for the chief medical examiner’s office said on Sunday.
Shortly before 4 a.m. on Friday, police officers responded to a 911 call about an unconscious child in an apartment in the Forest Houses complex in the Morrisania neighborhood of the Bronx.
When officers arrived at the apartment, they found Ms. Eason performing CPR on Jalayah, according to the official.
Emergency responders took the girl to NYC Health & Hospitals/Lincoln, where she was pronounced dead.
Ms. Eason was the subject of an abuse and neglect report last year in regard to Jalayah’s 8-year-old brother, according to a person who saw some of her social service records and spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss the case.
While the Administration for Children’s Services did not substantiate the report, notes in the family’s file indicated problems in the household.
In October, the brother’s school reported that the child came to school with a bruised and swollen face and told a teacher his mother had punched and kicked him for drinking out of the sink, the file says. The school also reported that the brother had been absent most days, was often not picked up until an hour after dismissal on days he was present, wore the same dirty clothes for days at a time and smelled of urine.
When a caseworker visited the apartment a week later, no marks on the brother were visible, the files state. Ms. Eason told a caseworker that she had been given a diagnosis of bipolar disorder during the pandemic but had never gotten help for it. She offered no explanation for her son’s frequent school absences. (Jalayah, who was 5 at the time, did not appear to have been enrolled in school.)
Jalayah’s brother confirmed to the caseworker that his mother had punched him but said he felt safe and comfortable with her.
At a conference afterward with A.C.S., the school said it would monitor Jalayah’s brother closely. He continued to be frequently absent from school, but two months later, A.C.S. closed the abuse and neglect case as unfounded, the file shows.
The agency has been dealing with staffing shortages. The person who had access to Ms. Eason’s file said that the agency’s Bronx North field office, which covers Ms. Eason’s neighborhood, had requested assistance conducting home visits because caseworkers were overwhelmed. An A.C.S. spokeswoman confirmed in a statement that caseworkers from a central office had recently been assigned to help out at the Bronx North office.
Bronx North caseworkers have an average load of 12.5 cases, A.C.S. said — about 17 percent higher than the citywide average.
Michelle Abreu, who lives in the apartment directly below where Jalayah was found, said she learned of the girl’s death when the police knocked on her door on Friday morning.
“I just started crying, because it’s sad,” Ms. Abreu, with her young nephew at her side, said in an interview in the building.
Camille Baker, Maria Cramer and Asmaa Elkeurti contributed reporting. Susan Beachy contributed research.
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