HOUSTON – Houston police are questioning a 20-year-old man in connection with the death of a 2-year-old girl who doctors say suffered head injuries and burns.
She was pronounced dead Monday after her mother found she'd stopped breathing.
"She didn't have no heartbeat, she didn't have nothing," Shalea Guillory said.
Guillory said that she was awakened at 2 a.m. Monday by her boyfriend, who told her something was wrong with the girl. Guillory called an ambulance which rushed the child, 2-year-old Madisyn Carter, to Southwest Memorial Hospital where doctors discovered the injuries.
Guillory said that after the girl passed away, her boyfriend told her, "Madisyn's OK. She's in a good place. At least you don't have to worry about nobody watching her no more."
Police questioned the man and arrested him at the hospital for probation violations. Guillory says the girl had been withdrawn for the last several weeks, and suffered minor injuries after being left in the man's care, but she didn't recognize them as possible signs of abuse.
"She'd come back she come back with a little bruise, or a little scratch, or something. He have legitimates reasons, like we were at the park or something, and I trusted him so I didn't think nothing of it. Guillory said crying, "I didn't know, I didn't know, I didn't know."
Guillory's boyfriend was given a deferred sentence for conspiracy to commit armed robbery and evading arrest in 2012, but Guillory says he'd stopped meeting with his probation officer.
No charges have been filed in the death of the girl. Police are awaiting the results of an autopsy.