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Fair Oaks girl's death reveals tragedy of inaction
(Sacramento Bee, The (CA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Oct. 12--A neighbor could hear him screaming at the little girl while she was in the bathtub.
A family friend saw him backhand the 3-year-old in the stomach when she interrupted his video game.
A social worker assigned to protect her saw she had a broken arm and a mysterious burn, but the worker still recommended that the girl remain in the home.
And that is where Valeeya Brazile was killed on Feb. 5 -- one in a series of Sacramento children to die this year of suspected abuse or neglect, despite intervention by Sacramento County's Child Protective Services.
The case starkly illustrates the worst that can happen when the agency falls down on its job. But the tragedy also reveals a web of adults who knew or suspected that something was terribly wrong in Apartment 2 of the Northridge Terrace Apartments in Fair Oaks, but did or said nothing.
Until it was too late.
"She didn't have to die," said Sacramento Sheriff's Sgt. Jeff Reinl, who heads the child abuse unit that is investigating the case. "People could have recognized -- and probably should have recognized -- that things were not right in that household."
The mother's boyfriend, 20-year-old Thomas Jerome Martin, was arrested in June. Martin has denied causing Valeeya Brazile's death, court documents show, but the 6-foot-2, 190-pound man has been charged with murder and assault on a child causing death and is awaiting trial in the Sacramento County jail.
The smiling little girl, who loved pancakes and beamed with pride when she pointed out the letter "V," is in a group considered society's most vulnerable: children age 5 and under. These are the children who have limited, if any, exposure to school and its many watchful eyes. They are the smallest and weakest and most dependent upon those who care for them. They keep their household's secrets.
"Those families, friends, neighbors and medical providers are the most vital link to keeping these kids safe," said Reinl.
Valeeya had all of them surrounding her, plus her own CPS worker, a court-appointed attorney and a juvenile court referee watching out for her.
In the end, none of that mattered.
Born into an unstable family life
Violence was part of Valeeya's family fabric even before she was born on April 7, 2004 at Mercy General Hospital in Sacramento, weighing 5 pounds 2 ounces.
Her father, Villie Lee Brazile Jr., was killed in August 2003 at his home in Victorville, where someone put two bullets in his head. Valeeya's older brother witnessed the killing.
Before the murder, an allegation of neglect was made about the family to San Bernardino County's child welfare agency on Jan. 2, 2003. Milicca "Mia" Holmes was pregnant when someone notified the agency that the mother-to-be was drinking and smoking marijuana daily, according to a CPS report filed with the juvenile court.
But CPS would enter the children's lives in a much bigger way in Sacramento on Oct. 27, 2006, when Valeeya was 2 1/2 and her brother was nearly 4.
That day, the children were taken from their mother after police were called to a parking lot of a Northgate Boulevard garage. Police records indicate that Valeeya's mother went to the Jiffy Lube there to confront her boyfriend, an employee named Albert Seay.
A wild confrontation ensued in which Holmes allegedly bit Seay and keyed his brand new blue Cadillac. Reports said she also egged his car with eggs she had just received from the Women, Infants and Children program.
When police arrived about 9:40 a.m., they found Holmes smelling of alcohol (she later tested at 0.029, below the 0.08 legal limit). They also found Valeeya in the back seat of Holmes' car in a child seat that was not buckled in.
CPS was called, and soon Valeeya and her older brother were placed in a five-bedroom home in Elk Grove with foster mother Renita Horton.
Horton, 49, fondly recalls Valeeya's stay, which lasted less than four months.
"I never had any kids. Valeeya, she was like my little girl," said Horton, 49, who frequently dissolved into tears while discussing the girl.
Horton laughed about the pink cowboy boots at Target that Valeeya just had to have, and she readily caved. She still has Valeeya's baby blue tricycle. She cannot bear to give it away.
Horton's adopted son, 12-year-old Joseph -- who started out as Horton's foster child -- adored his little sister "V," even though she woke him up to watch cartoons.
"Every Saturday morning, she'd come in and jump on our bed," he said. "And I'd say, 'Hold on, the sun's not even up yet!' "
That short period of Valeeya's life may have been the most stable she ever experienced.
Valeeya and her brother were returned to Holmes' custody on Feb. 15, 2007, with CPS supervision. Horton continued to visit the kids and knew they were attached to their mom, but she grew concerned about the situation in the Fair Oaks apartment.
A neighbor, Thomas Jerome Martin, had moved in from across the street, where he had been living with his grandmother, according to sheriff's detectives and a family friend. His days consisted largely of playing games on his Xbox console inside the two-bedroom, one-bath apartment, and one friend said the children rarely ventured outside unless Holmes was home.
Horton learned that the 20-year-old, who went by his initials, "T.J.," wasn't working. She was uneasy about seeing Martin constantly sprawled on the floor of the apartment playing video games. When he talked to the kids, she said, he used cartoon voices like Donald Duck.
"I just didn't understand. Why is somebody so old doing such young stuff?" Horton said. "I questioned Mia about him being on the floor playing kid's stuff, and I said, 'You need to find someone who's more responsible.' "
By then, Mia Holmes was keeping a busy schedule of counseling, parenting classes, a domestic violence support group and alcohol and drug treatment. Her social worker later would say she "had never had a client work so hard to get her kids back."
Martin, meanwhile, was serving as full-time babysitter.
Conflicting tales of life at home
Between January and June 2007, CPS social worker Alexis Hince wrote positive reports about the family's progress.
"Children appeared healthy and appropriately dressed... Children appear to be adjusting well... Mo(ther) has completed all her services... Mo(ther) stated she has learned a lot about handling her anger, how marijuana effects ones life and children and how she is attracting the wrong men..."
Hince made note of a two-inch burn on Valeeya's hand and a broken elbow, injuries the girl's mother blamed on a humidifier and a fall from bed. Hince made no mention of Martin in her CPS service log, later saying she didn't know he had been living there.
Every time Hince scheduled a visit, Holmes would make Martin gather up his belongings and duck out, according to a family friend and investigators.
"CPS would come around, and he would trounce over to Grandma's," said sheriff's Detective Darin Pometta.
Despite Hince's observations, others were getting a different impression of life inside Apartment 2.
Alysia Torres, a next-door neighbor, told a detective after Valeeya's death that a man would yell at the little girl while she was in the bathtub.
"He was just telling her not to cry because she shouldn't be crying," Torres said. "I don't know what it was about but it went on for a good 20 minutes of him yelling at her."
"I heard her scream when he hits the wall. ... It is usually a bang as if he was taking the soap bottle and hitting it against the bathtub."
The smell of marijuana next door was "really bad," Torres said, and she complained to the apartment manager and to friends, the sheriff's report said.
Apartment manager Lindee Lane told The Bee she wasn't aware of problems at the apartment. "Every time I would go to the house, the kids would be well-fed, playing, whatever," Lane said.
The children, however, had been "conditioned to lie," said sheriff's Sgt. Reinl.
Valeeya's big brother would eventually tell authorities that his sister had been afraid of Martin, that he had hit her and thrown her down, documents said. He also said Martin had told the girl never to tell her mother about his actions.
Jahmal "Bone" Stanford, whose daughters sometimes played with Valeeya at the complex, recalls spending time at the apartment, drinking beer or smoking marijuana with Martin on the patio while the children were inside.
Stanford, who was interviewed by The Bee at the Sacramento County jail -- where he is being held on domestic violence, attempted murder and robbery charges -- said that during a May "smoke session" with Martin, Valeeya opened the door to get some toys.
Martin ordered her back inside, and when she came out a second time he got angry and went inside, where Stanford said he heard Martin yelling and Valeeya crying.
"I guess he just kind of snapped, went off the bad side," Stanford said.
A few days later, he said, he saw a cast on Valeeya's arm.
Medical records show she broke her arm that May, though social worker Hince didn't make note of it until June.
Stanford recalled another incident when Martin was playing video games on the floor and Valeeya interrupted him because she wanted something from the refrigerator. Martin struck her in the stomach with the back of his hand, Stanford said.
"He's a big kid," he said, while Valeeya was tiny, weighing just over 30 pounds. "She kind of stumbled backward."
Stanford said he talked to Martin about disciplining the kids, about how Martin believed in physical discipline while Holmes objected to it.
But he never reported his concerns to anyone else. "It wasn't really my place," Stanford said.
No one, it appears, ever called 911. There is no indication that any of these stories were ever reported to CPS while Valeeya was alive, though the agency is also required to make its own "collateral contacts" -- reaching out to neighbors, friends, extended family and medical providers for a more complete view.
Mia Holmes told The Bee through her attorney that she wasn't hiding her living situation with Martin, because the social worker initially didn't ask her about it, said her attorney, Paul Chan. When she was asked again later, Chan said, his client "wasn't completely truthful" because she was embarrassed that, at 40, she was twice Martin's age.
And so, on Aug. 2, 2007 -- based on Hince's recommendation -- the juvenile court returned the children to the full legal and physical custody of their mother.
Nobody had told the court, or the girl's attorney, about the burn.
Or the broken elbow.
Or the screams from inside Apartment 2.
Autopsy reveals many injuries
Inside her cheerful, brightly colored classroom, Valeeya seemed to be doing well.
She had become a favorite at the Head Start preschool program at Skycrest Elementary. Preschool teacher David Porter later recalled how the shy young girl soon "became more self-assured," according to his interview with a sheriff's detective after her death.
Porter told the detective that he never saw any suspicious injuries or problems that would have caused him to call CPS. But, like others, he was uneasy about Martin, who frequently picked her up.
"One day in late September he was upset when he came to get Valeeya because she had sand in her hair," Porter said. "He was not nervous, but he was intense and had a lot of energy when he spoke.
"He left quickly. He made me nervous."
Even the girl's mother told people she had concerns. Holmes called a relative in Tennessee around August 2007 -- near the time the court closed the dependency case, telling her that she was pregnant and that a neighbor had come to her after seeing Martin scream at Valeeya on the way home from school.
"Mia has told me that Valeeya was scared of T.J. and whenever he would ask her a question, Valeeya would just say, 'No Daddy, I will not do it again' over and over," the little girl's aunt told Detective Tony Saika.
Holmes decided in February she would spend an entire day alone with her daughter for a "mommy/daughter day" to try to find out what was wrong with her, CPS documents show.
That was to be Feb. 6.
Valeeya did not live long enough.
The last place Valeeya was seen alive by outsiders was at 5:41 p.m. on Feb. 5 near a Hollywood Video store on San Juan Avenue, where Martin and a friend had taken her and her brother to rent a video game. Video surveillance cameras from a nearby Raley's grocery store caught images of the four walking; the girl appeared to have no injuries.
Whether they were visible or not, an autopsy would soon conclude that she had suffered numerous injuries over time, including the broken arm, broken ribs and evidence of bruising to her brain. In death, she was classified as a victim of battered child syndrome.
Martin's attorney, William White, questioned whether there was evidence of abuse in the case and said Valeeya had had a history of illnesses, including seizures. Detectives, he said, were under great pressure to make an arrest and settled on Martin.
Martin's own stories about the night of Valeeya's death were contradictory. He told detectives that he had been playing video games after everyone else had gone to bed and heard Valeeya vomiting in her bedroom as he passed by. Later, court documents indicate, he claimed he was in bed when he heard her, that he went into the bedroom and Valeeya "had her eyes open and was staring upwards."
At the hospital, Martin was adamant that emergency room staff continue trying to revive Valeeya. "Martin was also reported to have said that it 'was all his fault' several times," the documents state.
Emergency room workers tried for 27 minutes to resuscitate her, but it was too late.
Valeeya Brazile was pronounced dead at 11:27 p.m.
Mother now blames boyfriend
The next day, Skycrest Elementary got a call letting them know Valeeya wouldn't be coming to school. It was Martin, saying the girl had died from choking on her vomit.
"It was hard on our school community," said Skycrest Principal Mary Ann Pivetti, who was called out of a meeting and told about the death. "We're all here to take care of kids, and when we see something traumatic happen to a child, it hurts."
A fundraising drive at the school raised $140 for a Safeway gift card for the family.
Holmes said through her attorney that she now believes her boyfriend killed her daughter, though she maintains she never saw him yell at her or strike her.
"She feels guilty, obviously, very guilty," said attorney Chan, who is representing her pro bono. "She blames herself that maybe there were things she could have noticed or things she could have done."
Chan said Holmes is trying hard to get her two surviving children back, including a baby born about a month before Valeeya's death.
Holmes is adamant that she did not continue her relationship with Martin after Valeeya's death, Chan said.
Once again, others tell a different story.
On March 26 -- nearly two months after Valeeya died -- social worker Jennifer Amaro met with Holmes and Martin at a CPS office and gave them both bus passes, according to agency logs.
The social worker noted that Holmes told her she had received hospital records about Valeeya's death and that "the mother indicated hospital records revealed the child died from aspirating, not because of internal injuries."
The work of sorting the conflicting stories and drawing out prospective witnesses continues. "The investigation is not completed by any stretch of the imagination," said Sgt. Reinl.
To see more of The Sacramento Bee, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.sacbee.com/.
Copyright (c) 2008, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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