A couple has been charged with the December 2015 death of a 9-year-old girl who was found dead in a Baltimore County hotel, Baltimore County Police said.
Jasmine Sierra Preston, 26, the girl's mother, and Edward Joseph James, 31, the girl's stepfather, were indicted last week for child abuse resulting in death, neglect of a minor and related charges. Both are being held at the Baltimore County Detention Center.
The 5 a.m. call to police for an unresponsive child at the Knights Inn on Security Boulevard back on Dec. 1 came too late to save 9-year old Samara Preston.
"Very unfortunately, she was declared deceased at the scene,” Cpl. John Wachter of the Baltimore County Police Department said, “So her body was taken to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for an autopsy. On June 23rd of this year, that autopsy concluded that the cause of her death was malnutrition and neglect. The manner of her death was homicide."
The girl was found unresponsive on a bed and her mother and stepfather were in the hotel room with her, police said.
The two lived in a basement apartment on Beauford Avenue in West Baltimore where another tenant, Rashard Martin, learned of their arrests after police busted through the front door.
"When they said murder because of malnutrition and all that, well that seemed a little more believable,” Martin said, “They were going through hard times and stuff like that, but your child's supposed to come first. Your child's supposed to eat before you eat."
At this point, police will only say Samara Preston faced medical challenges in her life and responders at the hotel discovered injuries to her face that were already in the healing stage, but they say one thing is clear.
"What we have is a girl who needed medical care,” Wachter said, “She had these medical challenges and she did not get the care that she needed from her parents."
ABC2 was told the suspects' apartment in Central Park Heights had no restroom or running water, and neighbors say they never saw a young girl coming or going from that location.
"I hope it's not real, because if it is, they're going to get messed up in jail,” Martin said, “People have got kids out here and they don't respect anything like that. It's real bad."
Download the ABC2 News app for the iPhone, Kindle and Android.
