(Newswire.net — October 20, 2017) –The girl’s mum Grace Smith, a 69-year-old, called her cousin Veronica Green Posey to help her discipline her nine-year-old daughter Dericka Lindsay, who had been misbehaving.
Veronica, 64 years old, had come to her cousin’s home in Pensacola, Florida, and first, she struck the girl with a ruler and a metal pipe, but the girl ran to an armchair and the cousin sat on her, according to a police report.
The parents of the girl were present at the home, and they said later to the police that Posey, who weighs 325-pounds, sat on the girl for about ten minutes before she complained she couldn’t breathe.
Posey got up and tried to help the girl, she started to perform CPR, she tried breathing into the girl’s mouth then attempted chest compressions, but before that she called 911.
The arrest report does not say whether Dericka’s parents tried to help her.
But the little girl wasn’t breathing due to cardiac arrest caused by the overweight cousin, authorities say. Posey weighs more than four times the child’s weight who was about 72 pounds and 91 centimeters tall.
Even the ambulance couldn’t revive the girl. The girl was taken to a hospital, where she died less than an hour later.
The incident occurred at about 1.30pm Saturday in a home in Pensacola, Florida.
Police arrested the girl’s parents, charged them with child neglect. The cousin, charged with homicide in the death of Dericka Lindsay, was arrested for second-degree murder and aggravated abuse.
But Suspect Posey was released Monday on $125,000 bail. The Smiths remained in jail, with Grace Smith’s bond set at $75,000 and father James Smith’s bond at $50,000.
Mike Carroll, secretary of the Florida Department of Children and Families, said that the agency will work with the sheriff’s office on this case. He called the child’s death ”appalling.”