City woman waives hearing in girl's death

Reading Eagle

Jan. 27--A Reading woman waived a hearing Thursday on charges she caused the death of a 12-year-old girl by beating her with a mop handle and sitting on her Sept. 4 in Millmont.

Rose M. Boyd-Tolver, 40, of the 700 block of McKnight Street was returned to Berks County Prison without bail following an before District Judge Stuart D. Kennedy on homicide and assault charges in the death of Amira Brown.

Boyd-Tolver, who weighs 262 pounds, struck the girl repeatedly, then sat on her in the girl's bedroom at 630 Summit Ave., where the victim was in foster care, city detectives said.

Brown, who weighed 130 pounds and was a seventhgrader at Southwest Middle School, was lying unconscious beside her bed when her foster mother, Barbara Martin, found her, investigators said. Martin arrived home soon after the beating, police said.

Brown was dead on arrival in Reading Hospital, officials said.

She died of cardiorespiratory collapse caused by a beating and physical restraint, officials said. The coroner's office ruled the death a homicide.

Boyd-Tolver was a friend of Martin's and was in the residence watching Brown, detectives said.