2-YEAR-OLD FOUND DEAD ON BIRTHDAY

AUNT'S BOYFRIEND FACES MURDER CHARGE

Gabriel Escobar and Brian Mooar

Washington Post

A 2-year-old boy who was taken from his mother and placed under protective supervision with an aunt was found dead yesterday morning, the victim of a massive blunt force injury to the back, District authorities said

The case was ruled a homicide by the D.C. medical examiner, and late yesterday detectives investigating the death charged the aunt's boyfriend, Reginald Napoleon Hunter, 27, with second-degree murder.

The death occurred on the day Dontray Kevin Bradley turned 2, and six months after he and his two siblings were removed from their mother, a decision made by the D.C. Department of Human Services because the children allegedly were not being cared for properly.

Police released few details on the incident, and it was not clear how Dontray suffered the fatal injury.

Officers responding to a report of an unconscious person found the boy about 3:50 a.m. inside an apartment in the 4200 block of Sixth Street SE, in the Washington Highlands section.

One ambulance worker at the scene described the boy as having many bruises.

The case of Dontray and his siblings -- one was 3 years old and the other 1 -- illustrates the complex challenge faced by a social service system that aims to protect the children while trying to keep a family together.

In this case, social workers decided to place the children with their maternal aunt, "someone who the children know and mutually trust," said DHS spokesman Larry Brown.

The woman, whose name was not released, received temporary custody of the children after social workers investigated her and decided she was fit, Brown said.

The three children lived with the woman and her own child, who is 3 months old, Brown said.

The children's natural mother has not had any contact with DHS in "some time," Brown said, and no information on the father was available yesterday.

Police said Hunter lived at the aunt's apartment, a two-story building on Sixth Street SE.

DHS policy requires that everyone living in a house where children are placed be evaluated beforehand, but in this case the agency may not have known of Hunter's involvement.

"Any person who would come into contact with the children on a daily basis, we would take that into consideration," Brown said. "At this point, our records do not show that he was living there, so the social worker did not take that into account."

In January, Dontray and his siblings became part of an intensive DHS program designed to stabilize a family. Called "protective supervision," the program includes a broad range of social services, including money for food and health care, all monitored by social workers.

The family was last visited in March, and it is likely that there has been monitoring by telephone since then, Brown said. Home visits are made depending on need, and in this case the social worker did not find anything untoward.

"It was a stable living environment. The children were being cared for," said Brown. "The social worker was satisfied that the maternal aunt was providing quality care for the children."

The apartment building where the aunt lived is part of a decaying complex just south of Chesapeake Street, one of the most violent streets in the city. There have been two homicides on Chesapeake this year.

Several neighbors interviewed yesterday said the aunt had not been living there long.

Dontray's two siblings and their cousin have been temporarily placed with their grandmother in Maryland. Neither she nor other relatives could be reached yesterday.