Sentenced: Mother To Face Charges After 2YO Child Fatally Falls From Window In Hartford

[Sugar Cookie]

A mother will be charged after her two-year-old child fatally fell from a third-floor window in Hartford.

Hartford State’s Attorney Sharmese L. Wolcott said the charges against 34-year-old Tabitha Frank will reflect the child’s “tragic and untimely death.”

The charges stem from an incident on Saturday. According to the Hartford Fire Department, crews responded around 3:40 p.m. to the report of a child falling from a window of an apartment building on Capitol Avenue.

Hartford police said the boy died Monday after being in critical condition.

Hartford police Lt. Aaron Boisvert said five children between the ages of 2 and 12 were left alone in the apartment. Authorities are working to determine how long the children had been left alone and where their parents were at the time of the incident.

Police arrested and charged Frank with ten counts of risk of injury to a child. Those charges will be updated after the death of her son.

The four other children are now in the custody of the Connecticut Department of Children and Families.

Mother to face charges after 2-year-old child fatally falls from window in Hartford

A mother faces multiple counts of risk of injury to a child after her 2-year-old son fell from a third-floor window Saturday afternoon in Hartford, according to police.

www.wtnh.com

 

[Blunderbuss Firozabad]

No one's interested in your dupes

 

[Sugar Cookie]

Two rows of supporters donning shirts that read 'It takes a village' joined 34-year-old Tabitha Frank at Superior Court in Hartford where she faced a judge on a new manslaughter charge, nearly two weeks after her 2-year-old son, Corneiluz, fell from a Capitol Avenue apartment window and died.

Hera Noel spoke outside of court on her nephew, known as 'Little Papa' and her sister, Frank.

“An accident did take place. Childcare was on its way they just never made it," Noel said. “Now that it’s a tragedy, we want to pretend that she’s this horrible mother.”

Frank was initially charged with 10 counts of risk of injury after leaving her five children alone.

Hartford Police, who are jointly investigating with the state Department of Children and Families, added a manslaughter charge, saying the family home was in "deplorable and uninhabitable condition."

Hartford Attorney Wesley Spears representing Frank pro bono.

“DCF had an open case with this family and provided no adequate support to help Ms. Frank get through this situation. In addition, she’s a Section 8 tenant. Section 8 is supposed to inspect these apartments on a yearly basis and ensure they’re safe for these children," Spears said.

In a prepared statement, Ken Mysogland, bureau chief of external affairs for DCF said, "This is a horrible tragedy and much information is still being learned about the family as we conduct a joint investigation with the Hartford Police Department. We recognize differences of opinion may exist regarding what happened, the conditions in the home, and the children's well-being. The last report was received on the family in April 2023. The last visit occurred in mid-June - over one month prior to the fatality - and based on the information known at that time, the children were deemed safe and the home was observed to be adequate. The circumstances surrounding this traumatic incident highlight the complexities of child protective services work, how quickly conditions in a home can change, and the importance of everyone in the community knowing who to contact if they are concerned about a child's welfare."

'Village failed her' | Support for Hartford mom facing manslaughter charge after boy fell from window

Tabitha Frank was charged with 10 counts of risk of injury after 2-year-old Corneiluz fell out of a third-floor Capitol Avenue apartment window last month.

www.fox61.com

Williams died July 24, two days after Hartford police said he fell from his family's apartment window while he and his four siblings were left home alone.

DCF had last met with the family in mid-June and was preparing to close a case that was opened in April, DCF Commissioner Vannessa Dorantes said in a statement released Friday.

Imagineers LLC, the company that oversees the Section 8 federally subsidized apartment where Frank and the children lived on Capitol Avenue, required the building's owners in May to fix a list of violations that included clogged plumbing, deteriorating paint, mold on the ceiling and walls and missing carbon monoxide detectors that were required to be replaced in 24 hours, according to an inspection report obtained by the city of Hartford and shared with Hearst Connecticut Media Group.

The inspection report indicates that repairs were made by May 30 when a second inspection of the apartment occurred. The city does not routinely inspect apartments unless a complaint has been filed, a spokesperson for Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said Friday. Frank and her landlord had not filed any complaints with the city about the building since she moved into the apartment in 2021, the spokesperson said.


It is unclear how often Imagineers LLC is required to conduct inspections as a service provider for the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, which administers the Section 8 subsidized housing program. A call to Imagineers LLC was not returned Friday. The owners of the building doing business as 1079-93 Capitol Ave LLC also did not return a call or an email Friday.

In their reports, police described Frank's apartment as "abysmal" when they responded after Williams fell from the window. Police said there were cockroaches, piles of dirty laundry that smelled of feces, stacks of unwashed dishes and dirt on the floor that stuck to the children's clothes.

After Williams' fall, a DCF social worker arrived at the scene and told police when they last checked on the family in mid-June, the apartment appeared "not that abysmal." The agency had set Frank up with services and was preparing to close their child protection case when Williams died, Dorantes said in a statement.

"The last contact with the children was in mid-June 2023 and based on the assessment at the time, further child protective services was not warranted — and the case was in the process of being closed — resulting in no additional visits or contact," Dorantes said in the statement.

Neighbors told officers that the children were often home without an adult, according to police reports. But it is unclear if anyone called DCF to report the concern.

"A simple gesture of offering help may change the life of a child and their caregiver," Dorantes said.

Frank initially told police on July 22 that she left the apartment for a short time to get food and diapers and she believed the 2-year-old's father, Christopher Shand, was on his way to watch all five children. The child died two days later after suffering several skull fractures, police said.

Attorney Wesley Spears, who is working for free to represent Frank, said when the boy fell from the window on July 22 his client was driving back from dropping off an Uber customer in Cape Cod to earn money to support the children.

Frank told investigators she placed the oldest child, her 12-year-old daughter, in charge of the other four children while she was gone, the police report stated.


The 12-year-old later admitted to a DCF social worker that she had been sleeping throughout the day and she thought her mother had been gone since the morning, a police report said.

Official:DCFcalled 18 times before Hartford boy fell to his death, but neglect found just once

Aug. 7—Williams died July 24, two days after Hartford police said he fell from his family's apartment window while he and his four siblings were left home alone. DCF had last met with the family in mid-June and was preparing to close a case that was opened in April, DCF Commissioner Vannessa...

news.yahoo.com

 

[cubby]

I know where I live we have inspections every 90 days and they are serious about it, but we are over 55 seniors, so we don't make the mess that children do, there have been a few tho that have been asked to leave over the condition of their apartments.

Just because DCF was neglecting their duties doesn't mean that absolves the mother from taking care of her children, whether she was gong to the store or driving for Uber, she left her children alone and one died. She's responsible for them, how many times have we read that the babysitter was on the way and they never showed up? A whole lot of times, cause it's a lie.

 

[Sugar Cookie]

I bet the 12yo's life revolved around babysitting her siblings.

 

[GoneWest]

That lawyer needs to meet with her client and get their stories straight. Mom says she left for a short amount of time to go to store and so called baby daddy was supposed to be coming over to watch kids. Easily verifiable. Lawyer says she was out Ubering people just trying to support her motley crew and left 12 year old in charge. 12 year old doesn’t know shit because she was basically sleeping all day.
So is it baby daddy’s fault, 12 year olds, CPS, landlords, or Housing Authority’s? It’s obviously NOT the hard working loving mother’s.

 

[Sejanus]

That thing had 5 kids?
Some guys will bang anything.

 

[keemalove]

“get out of my swamp!”

 

[Busy Bee]

Too bad the two rows of supporters, decked out in “it takes a village” attire were not there helping her get committed childcare, assisting her to get her apartment cleaned up. Perhaps, helping her get family planning services, letting her know that you don’t leave your children home alone! You don’t leave your home before qualified child care has arrived and have been given instructions on the care of each child. No she’s the mother, she’s given birth to 5 children, by now she should know that she is responsible for thier care. Where is the father or fathers, the one who didn’t show up?

 

[Sugar Cookie]

@Busy Bee

No she doesn't because the way society is now it is not her fault she can't keep her legs closed, use birth control or find a suitable partner to father her children.

“I was doing the best that I could. I was good mom. One thing happened. It was a mistake. I'm never gonna forget it. I'm never gonna forgive myself for it,” said Frank.

Frank is also now pleading for people to help pay for a proper burial for her son.

She’s looking to raise $8,000 and the services are being planned at All Faith in South Windsor.

After toddler's deadly fall, mother facing manslaughter charge makes plea for money to bury her son

A Hartford mother is now speaking out following the death of her two-year-old son. Tabitha Frank is facing charges in connection with the toddler’s deadly fall from a third-story window. She is due back in court Thursday morning as she faces charges including manslaughter. But she wants people...

www.nbcconnecticut.com

 

[Metalfan]

Hawt

 

[Sugar Cookie]

Tabitha Frank, a Hartford mother whose toddler fell out of a window and died in 2023, pleaded guilty to manslaughter earlier this week and was sentenced to five years of probation.

Frank was working part time as an Uber driver and left 2-year-old Corneliuz Shand Williams with his four older sisters — the oldest of whom was 12 — on July 22, 2023. Frank said she thought the child’s father was going to arrive momentarily. But the father didn’t arrive until it was too late. Corneliuz fell from a third-floor window and died in the hospital two days later.

On Tuesday, Frank pleaded guilty to a felony manslaughter charge and risk of injury to a child in her son’s death.

“I’m not a monster. I’m a mother who made a mistake, doing the best that she could,” Frank said in an interview. “My kids know they are loved, despite what anybody else thinks. My kids know. My son knows.”

State’s attorney Sharmese Walcott said in a statement that it was “an extremely difficult and tragic case.”

“A two-year-old child died a horrendous and preventable death and should never have been placed in the situation that led to this outcome,” Walcott said in her statement. “Social services had been involved with this family off and on, yet this tragedy still occurred.”

Child welfare workers with the state Department of Children and Families investigated the family 18 times before Corneliuz died and had most recently determined the children were safe in their home about a month before the accident, which Frank said was proof she was a fit mother who just needed some extra help.

“I love my kids. I love all five of them,” Frank said. “I’m just sorry things happened the way they happened. If I could go back, I would have done things way different. But that’s not my reality. This is my reality.”

Tabitha Frank, whose toddler fell from window, is sentenced

Tabitha Frank was charged after her son, 2-year-old Corneliuz Shand Williams, fell out of a third-floor window and died in 2023.

ctmirror.org

Corneliuz


From 2023

Tabitha Frank thinks her personal hell would be cold.

The kind of cold that feels like it could slice to the bone. The kind of cold that makes your feet go numb. The kind of cold she felt waiting in the police station while a single thought churned through her mind:

My son is going to die alone.

At the time of Frank’s arrest, her 2-year-old son was fighting for his life with serious head injuries, unable to breathe on his own. When the call came in about the severity of his injuries, police took her to visit him before bringing her back to the station for the remainder of her interview and booking, according to the July 22 incident report.

Earlier that day, Frank — who worked part-time as an Uber driver — left her toddler, Corneliuz Shand Williams, with his four older sisters so she could pick up a passenger and stop by the store. Though she was working double shifts as a certified nursing assistant, the extra work driving for Uber would help cover the expense of back-to-school supplies. Frank says she thought Corneliuz’s father was going to arrive momentarily to watch him.

But he didn’t arrive until it was too late. Instead, at 3:38 p.m. on July 22, reports came in that a toddler — her toddler — had plunged from a third-floor window and was badly injured. He died in the hospital two days later.

After the accident, the state placed Frank’s remaining children in the homes of other family members. She’s worried about the kids and says they are struggling with their grief over losing their brother when they’re separated from her and each other.

“It really was just an accident, what happened,” Frank said after her arrest.

“This is not one of those situations where I went out clubbing, or I went out partying,” she said in a later interview. “If you knew my story — I’m not looking for sympathy — I’m just looking for understanding from people. And maybe if you knew what I was dealing with, maybe you could be understanding the situation, and kind of maybe even relate.”

Frank believes she’s being blamed for Corneliuz’s death because of one decision: she left her children alone.

“I feel like people are looking to blame someone, and they’re blaming me,” she said.

The Connecticut Mirror reviewed the police report, photos, videos and city housing records and conducted hours of interviews with Frank and others to understand the factors that led to Corneliuz’s death.

What that research shows is that Frank’s decision to leave her children unattended that July day was not the only domino to fall before he died. It was simply the last.

Long-standing conditions of poverty and the stress of being a single mother of five children under the age of 13, among other factors, weighed on the family and contributed to Frank’s decision that day. Layered over all of this was a complex web of child welfare and housing laws that ultimately failed to prevent the tragedy that occurred.

By the time emergency responders converged on Frank’s Hartford apartment, there had been years of missed opportunities — opportunities to address the substandard housing conditions in which she lived and opportunities to provide her with sufficient support to raise five children alone.

Police who responded to the accident said they found the children living in a filthy apartment that reeked of bad food and human waste. Frank and her attorney argue that it was just the result of five kids living in a house and said some of the living conditions were beyond her control.

The apartment failed two Section 8 inspections while the family lived there, with officials noting problems with mold, smoke detectors and damaged electrical sockets, among other issues. City code enforcement hadn’t inspected the apartment under its newly introduced system that aims to make housing safer. State law exempted the property from a requirement that it have window guards because it was built decades before building codes existed.

Child welfare workers with the state Department of Children and Families investigated the family 18 times before Corneliuz died and had most recently determined the children were safe in their home about a month before the accident, which Frank and her lawyer, Wesley Spears, point to as evidence she isn’t a negligent mother. The police simply came into her life on a bad day when the house was a mess and a horrible accident occurred, they argue.

Frank attributes many of the conditions described by police to the difficulty of keeping a clean house with five children as a single working mother. Her refrigerator had been broken for days when police arrived, she said, leading to stale food. One of her children had wet the bed, and their damp clothes from a visit to the waterpark were in bags.

She transported laundry to the laundromat in garbage bags and said she’d planned to help her oldest daughter take out the trash later in the day — the girl struggled to take out the trash without dragging the bag on the floor.

Add to all that the fact the kids had been playing with slime the night before, she said. Slime sticks to everything and led to many of the spots police saw on the floor, Frank added.

“You guys don’t think kids can mess up a house?,” she said. “If two kids are in the house with a single parent, they make messes. You see how bad that is? Imagine five of them.”

Her attorney said the reports and ensuing charges show a lack of understanding of the stress the family was under.

Continue reading

A CT child fell to his death. Many forces shaped his life — and death

Her apartment hadn’t been inspected by city housing code enforcement in at least three years. Their inspections are largely complaint-driven.

www.courant.com

I feel bad for this woman but at the same time I am also very angry at her.

Who the hell does she think should be blamed for her poor reproductive choices?

If you need support than you really should not have 5 children. It is great that there are social safety nets but again if you need them you have no business having 5 children by multiple men. And in this case you know their are multiple because the deceased child had his own father and the girls are placed with diffrent family members so at the very least there are 3.

You have four older daughters and the oldest who is only 12 is expected to care for a toddler until his father arrives in the home. If this is true - you are allowing a man not related to those girls access to them and that is a problem.

Also why did DCF have 18 encounters with this family?

 

[runninfawn]

Tabitha Frank, whose toddler fell from window, is sentenced

Tabitha Frank was charged after her son, 2-year-old Corneliuz Shand Williams, fell out of a third-floor window and died in 2023.

ctmirror.org

View attachment 196268
Corneliuz


From 2023














Continue reading

A CT child fell to his death. Many forces shaped his life — and death

Her apartment hadn’t been inspected by city housing code enforcement in at least three years. Their inspections are largely complaint-driven.

www.courant.com

I feel bad for this woman but at the same time I am also very angry at her.

Who the hell does she think should be blamed for her poor reproductive choices?

If you need support than you really should not have 5 children. It is great that there are social safety nets but again if you need them you have no business having 5 children by multiple men. And in this case you know their are multiple because the deceased child had his own father and the girls are placed with diffrent family members so at the very least there are 3.

You have four older daughters and the oldest who is only 12 is expected to care for a toddler until his father arrives in the home. If this is true - you are allowing a man not related to those girls access to them and that is a problem.

Also why did DCF have 18 encounters with this family?

i was raised by a single parent, my father, way back when it was very very unusual that a single male raised his own kids without a woman's help, at least during the day, and my father didn't have family to help him with the 5 of us... i do remember when my baby brother was 2 y.o. and the oldest (sister) was 12.... our house was always clean and neither of us was required to babysit when my dad had to be somewhere else.... we did have a daily chore according to our ages, ex. drying dishes (i remember that one cuz i hated it lol) never washing dishes as my dad believed in using very hot water to wash dishes in (i also have that believe) , sweeping kitchen floor etc... making our bed and helping the younger ones make theirs till they were old enough to do it by themselves etc.... he did the cooking and the heavy chores (laundry, washing floors etc) and still found time and energy to have fun with us.... i remember him teaching me to dance and i taught him to rock and roll (i was maybe 14 at the time) and yes our friends were always welcomed at our house.... granted we were poor, we never had "new" clothes but hand-me-downs and that was great also,, our tummies were always full (not with the very best of foods but we never went hungry and my dad could work magic in the kitchen as he was at one time a cook in a lumber jack's camp)