How Could You? Hall of Shame-Allenia Bledsoe case-Child Death UPDATED
This will be an archive of heinous actions by those involved in child welfare, foster care and adoption. We forewarn you that these are deeply disturbing stories that may involve sex abuse, murder, kidnapping and other horrendous actions.
From Sacramento, California, foster child “Allenia Bledsoe was found dead in an Elk Grove foster home Nov. 7, said Detective Josh Magdaleno of the Elk Grove Police Department.
While it’s not clear what killed the girl, there were no suspicious circumstances, he said.
Any future investigation by police will depend on the outcome of an autopsy by the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office, he said.
The Coroner’s Office doesn’t expect to complete its investigation for approximately four weeks, said county spokeswoman Chris Andis. Autopsies for children often take longer than those for adults because more tests are conducted in the absence of clear causes of death, she said.
The wait for answers has deepened the pain for Allenia’s parents, Jayme Wimberly and Allen Bledsoe. They can’t understand how a healthy child could suddenly die. They were only told that Allenia visited the dentist the day before, woke up around 5 a.m. the following morning from a bad dream and was found dead in her bed two hours later.
“I want to know if she died from natural causes or if she was murdered,” said Bledsoe.
They have sought more details from Sacramento County Child Protective Services and the Coroner’s Office. But officials have said they either can’t comment or that the parents will have to wait for the coroner’s investigation to be completed. They said they have gotten conflicting reports about how long that investigation will take.
CPS spokeswoman Laura McCasland said confidentiality laws prevent the agency from commenting about the case, beyond releasing a written statement confirming Allenia’s death while in foster care. She said all foster care deaths are investigated by the agency.
Wimberly and Bledsoe said Allenia was a healthy girl with no history of illness. Allenia’s grandmother, Alicia Bledsoe, also described the girl as vibrant, saying she and Wimberly visited her at New Horizons Foster Care Agency in West Sacramento every two weeks.
New Horizons, a nonprofit, manages some foster care homes in Sacramento County. When contacted by The Sacramento Bee, a woman at New Horizons’ office said she could not comment about Allenia’s death, then declined to give her name and hung up the phone.
In the last two years, the California Department of Social Services made 12 visits to the agency’s properties in response to complaints, department records show. The department has sustained seven allegations against the agency, two for the “most serious type of violations in which there is an immediate risk to the health, safety or personal rights of those in care,” and five for violations that could have turned into a risk if not corrected.
In one of the more serious violations, a foster parent hit a child with a spatula as a form of discipline, records show. In another case, a foster parent blocked a child from entering the home.
One of the violations considered less serious involved a foster parent who allowed a child to wander out of the home for a “significant amount of time” before realizing that the child was gone, records show. In another case, a foster parent was cited for keeping knives and cleaning products within easy access of children and for sleeping in the same room as children.
Wimberly and Bledsoe said they lost custody of Allenia and her baby brother earlier this year because of domestic abuse and drug abuse. They said they fought one another but did not hit their children. They said they have been attending classes and taking other steps to try to regain custody of their children.
“If she had been with us, she would still be alive,” Allen Bledsoe said.
Wimberly said she is eager to get her 1-year-old son out of foster care.
“I want to get him out because I feel Child Protective Services isn’t safe,” she said.
Alicia Bledsoe said she has also been trying for several months to get custody of the two children. CPS has a policy of placing children with relatives whenever possible. Alicia Bledsoe said CPS has visited her home several times and keeps making additional requests, such as saying her son and Wimberly can’t live in the home, too.
Alicia Bledsoe has a pile of toys and clothes she bought for Allenia because she assumed she would get custody. “I cry every time I see them,” she said.”
Sacramento parents seek answers in foster care death of their 2-year-old
[Sacramento Bee 12/19/14 by Brad Brannan]
Update: “A 2-year-old girl placed in an Elk Grove foster home died of acute pneumonia, the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office concluded in a report that has done little to quell the concerns of the girl’s birth family.The coroner’s 10-page report details the examination of Allenia Bledsoe, including the finding of bacteria in her lungs leading to pneumonia, but does not address the circumstances of her illness or the response by her foster mother. The report about the Nov. 7 death was completed late last month.
In response to questions from The Sacramento Bee, Coroner Kimberly Gin said her office interviewed the foster mother and learned she did not take Allenia to a doctor.
“The child was sick with some type of cold or virus that all the kids in the house had,” Gin said. “She seemed to get better, as did everyone else. The day she died she wasn’t exhibiting any symptoms at all.”
Allenia’s bacterial infection was likely the result of the virus that was going around the house, she said.
For Allenia’s birth parents, the report only adds to the questions they’ve had since the toddler’s death, when they were told Allenia woke up upset early in the morning and was found unresponsive a few hours later.
“She didn’t have a fighting chance,” said her mother, Jayme Wimberly. “I want to know why they didn’t bring her to the hospital.”
Allenia’s grandmother, Alicia Bledsoe, said the family is upset because neither the county nor the foster-care agency responsible for Allenia will discuss the circumstances of her death in any detail. “They should have brought her to the hospital,” she said.
At her home, foster mother Latasha Norman was reluctant to discuss Allenia’s death last week. Asked why she didn’t take Allenia to a doctor, she said, “Because I didn’t know she was sick. I didn’t know she had pneumonia.”
She then shut her front door, refusing to answer any more questions. Several children could be seen in her home.
Denise Lowery, administrator of New Horizons Foster Care Agency in West Sacramento, confirmed that Norman continues to work for the agency. She said investigations by the state Department of Social Services and county Child Protective Services found that Norman had done nothing wrong.
She said foster children often get sick without going to a doctor, unless the illness continues, and then the agency recommends that foster parents take them to a physician.
“I feel awful for them,” Lowery said of Allenia’s family.
Two pediatricians contacted by The Bee for their professional opinions said they did not want to get involved in a potential legal matter.
Coughing, fever, chills and shortness of breath are the most common symptoms of pneumonia, according to the American Lung Association. While not common, young children can die from pneumonia, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Gin said it is not unusual for parents who have lost children to say they exhibited no symptoms of the illness that killed them.
“I can’t say the child did not have symptoms,” she said of Allenia. “I can only say that we are often told this story of no symptoms.”
Laura McCasland, a CPS spokeswoman, said she could not comment about the agency’s investigation because it found no evidence of neglect or abuse by the foster mother.
Michael Weston, a Department of Social Services spokesman, said he could not discuss anything about Norman’s record as a foster mother because of confidentiality laws.
But Weston was able to discuss her record as a provider of other child care services. Norman has been licensed to provide child care since 2002 in Sacramento and Solano counties and had licensing problems with her Playful Scholars business around the time of Allenia’s death, Weston said.
On Nov. 10, three days after Allenia’s death, the department responded to a complaint that she was providing child care without a license, records show. Sacramento County, which then licensed day care facilities, had revoked her license because she had failed to pay a license fee, Weston said. The state, which recently took over licensing duties from the county, upheld the complaint and told her to reapply, Weston said. She was given a child care license from the state last month.
Norman has a history of financial problems associated with her child care business, bankruptcy records show. She filed for bankruptcy protection twice in 2013. Her income barely covered expenses and she had more than $100,000 in debt, most of it owed to the Internal Revenue Service for failing to pay income taxes five years in a row, according to records she filed with the court.
She also listed a $12,000 debt to Dana Hurkens of Rancho Cordova from the settlement of a 2007 civil case in Sacramento Superior Court. Hurkens said Norman was renting her building for her child care business and moved out without telling her or turning off the water.
“She said, ‘I can’t operate. I’m going under,’” Hurkens said. “The pipes froze and burst and caused $200,000 in damage. We couldn’t use the building for three years.””
Let’s round up the usual suspects!
1). Privatized CPS system– in this case one with a decidedly dicey record for seeing to its charges’ safety and well-being.
2). Child NOT being abused by the natural parents, but was removed anyway, presumably because of the risk factors for abuse.
3). Child dies in the care of the CPS system that took her from her family in the name of protecting her from POTENTIAL harm in her own home.
Why do we keep pretending that this makes any sense?
Who ever did this should be asamved of them self’s me reading this year’s after my baby passed you no my baby would have been 8 an she died wen she was too I NOMY BABY WOULD BE THE BEAUTIFUL S LIL GIRL OLDEST OUT OF SIX… I JUST WANT TO SAY SHE IS STILL WATCHING OVER ME AND ALL 5 OF MY CGILDREN THAT ARE ALIVE TODAY THANK YOU GOD!!! WITH OUT U I NO THERE WOULD HAVE NEVER BEEN AWy in Jesus name I say, Amen.