Nine Charged With Girls Death
One or the worst story of the year: Philadelphia’s child welfare agency, a horrible grand jury report yesterday found that a fourteen year girl rotted in her bed because of the system’s brutal indifference.
Prosecutors charged nine people, including the girl’s parents and four social workers, who stood by while Danieal Kelly, who ahd cerebral palsy, starved to death.
Kelly’s corpse was found in a boiling hot West Philadelphia rowhouse on August 4th, 2006, weighing only 42 pounds, which is the weight of a typical five year old.
The grand jury charged Kelly’s mother, Andrea Kelly, thirty nine years old, with murder, and her father, Daniel Kelly, thirty seven years old, with child endangerment. But it devoted most of its 258 pages to chronicling how those outside the family failed their mission to rescue Danieal Kelly.
The jury also criminally charged two DHS social workers, Dana Poindexter, fifty one years old, and Laura Sommerer, thirty three years old, with felony counts of child endangerment and misdemeanor counts of reckless endangerment. It said that Poindexter tossed Daanieal Kelly’s file into a trash filled file box and that Sommerer, in a visit to the home shortly before the death, failed to realize that the girl was in horrible shape.
In addition, the grand jury also charged three friends of the victim’s mother with perjury. It accused them of trying to protect her by lying to the grand jury about Danieal’s deteriorating condition.
As of yesterday, by early evening, six of the nine people charged were in custody.
This completely sickens me.
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