The parents of a 5-year-old girl who died in Baltimore Monday afternoon have been arrested on child abuse charges, authorities announced Tuesday.
Bernice Betty Byrd, 32, and Gerald Byrd, 34, were arrested late Monday night and charged with child abuse and neglect resulting in death, the Baltimore Police Department said in a news release.
According to charging documents obtained by local station WBAL, officers responded to a residence on the 2200 block of Aiken Street just after 12:30 p.m. for reports of an unresponsive child.
When they arrived at the scene, they located a 5-year-old girl whose body was “remarkable for its severely emaciated state.”
The victim was identified as the Byrds’ daughter, Zona Byrd.
“The ribs were clearly visible and it was readily apparent that the victim was extremely malnourished,” the documents state, according to WMAR.
According to police, the parents said Zona and an older brother got into a disagreement on Friday. The dispute appeared to have been physical, but the parents didn’t seek medical help.
The Byrds also couldn’t tell investigators when they had last fed their daughter.
Three other children were at home at the time police arrived. One of them, a 6-year-old boy, also appeared to be malnourished and required medical attention.
An equally disturbing incident unfolded in Harlem just a day earlier. Nytavia Ragsdale, the mother of a 4-year-old boy who died after police found him unresponsive in the family’s apartment on W. 145th St., has been charged with criminally negligent homicide and endangering the welfare of a child, the NYPD said Monday.
While an autopsy to determine how the boy died has yet to be completed, a police source with direct knowledge of the case told the Daily News that young Jahmeik Modlin was malnourished when police rushed him to Harlem Hospital.
The boy, who was also suffering from hypothermia, died at the hospital about 10 hours later.