A malnourished seven-year-old girl died in an Oklahoma hospital just days after she told a good-hearted neighbor that her abusive parents loved her.
Violet Mitchell was taken to St. Anthony’s Medical Center on August 2, where doctors said she was ‘extremely malnourished’ and was ‘essentially skin and bones’ with ‘sunken eyes,’ the Kansas City Star reports.
But just two earlier, a kind neighbor tried to help the young girl.
‘I took her [in] because she was hungry,’ Tera Day told NewsNation. ‘I fed her chicken nuggets, mashed potatoes and carrots.’
Day noted that the girl ‘didn’t tell me anything about her parents, just that they loved her.
‘That’s all she said and she cried, and I took her back home,’ Day recounted.
A recently-released autopsy has since determined Mitchell’s death was due to a ‘failure to thrive’ after finding a plastic baby bottle blocking her small intestine.
She weighed just 29 pounds, and was wrapped in a blanket, ‘wearing a diaper that was otherwise sized for a three year old,’ the doctors told investigators, according to documents obtained by KOCO.
She also had a bacterial infection and injuries to her cheek, shoulder and left leg, as well a ‘pale green’ discoloration on her stomach.
Violet’s mother, Lisa Mitchell, and her boyfriend, Anthony Yonko, were later arrested on child neglect and aggravated abuse charges.
Police said they received a call shortly after doctors pronounced Violet dead from a relative of the family, who said he overhead a group phone call in which numerous people were ‘trying to come up with the same story regarding the death of Violet,’ according to the Oklahoman.
The caller also said Anthony’s brother, David, and Lisa’s sister, Tiffany, were heard admitting they knew Violet was dead before she was brought to the hospital.
An arrest report also states that one of Violet’s cousins, another 7-year-old girl, told investigators she knew that Violet died in a crib, where her arms and legs were often tied up with strings.
The young girl went on to tell police that her cousin was fed bread and little else, and told cops that her mother ‘spilled hot soup on Violet, on her face and arms,’ according to an affidavit.
She also said Lisa would beat her daughter often, mostly with a broomstick, glued her mouth shut and kept Violet in a crib for a long time – possibly a month – and would remain tied-up when her mother and Anthony left the house.
If Violet cried, her mother and Anthony ‘cursed at her and kept food from her.’
The girl claimed she would sometimes grab Violet and run out of her apartment so that her parents would stop hitting her and would untie her cousin, but then tie her back up before everyone came back, out of fear.
David, Anthony’s brother, and Lisa’s sister, Tiffany, were also arrested in connection to the case when police determined they knew about the abuse, but failed to report it to police.
Violet’s parents and Tiffany are now being held on a $5million bond, while David is being held on a $1million bond.
The parents have pleaded not guilty, and had initially told police they thought Violet had the flu when they brought her to the hospital.
That morning, Anthony said he awoke to his girlfriend telling him Violet was not moving and was sick, and his brother then drove them to the hospital.
The couple also had other children that are now in the care of the Oklahoma Department of Human Services, according to KOCO.
Mitchell is now scheduled to appear in court on November 27.
In the meantime, community members are calling for justice for the young girl.
‘They should spent the rest of their life in jail, because that’s a baby,’ said Bridgette Mccullough, another neighbor.
‘That is a baby, they are so helpless.’
