exposing the dark side of adoption
Register Log in

Sheriffs Investigating 3-Year-Old's Death

public

POSTED: Monday, January 12, 2009

UPDATED: 2:06 am CST January 13, 2009

SAN ANTONIO -- A 3-year-old girl died Saturday night, one day after she fell down a flight of stairs.

Meledy Aranda Velasquez, 3, was admitted to Wilford Hall Medical Center on Saturday evening after her adoptive parents called the Bexar County Sheriff's Office on Friday night, saying she got a bump on her head after falling from some stairs at a home in the 11700 block of Fabiana in west Bexar County.

The parents gave the girl some Tylenol and monitored her progress, but on Saturday, the girl ran a fever and was sluggish and unresponsive.

An autopsy is pending as is procedure, said Ino Badillo with the sheriff's office. No charges had been filed Monday afternoon.

"Anytime you have an untimely death, especially with kids, we carry it as a homicide because while we are there, we need to get as much evidence as we can," he said.

Badillo said the investigation is standard and sheriff's officials would wait until the medical examiner's report was complete to determine if Velasquez's injuries were consistent with her parents' story.

Child Protective Services has placed the family's four other adopted and foster children in other homes, but CPS officials said the couple has no prior history with the department.

www.ksat.com
2009 Jan 13