CPS had visited mom accused of starving girl -CPS Screws up again!

Note from unhappygrammy-CPS is too busy taking children from innocent parents to worry about the truly abused. Will they ever learn?

CPS had visited mom accused of starving girl

Mother, a drug addict, arrested in 2009 death of 8-year-old daughter

By TERRI LANGFORD and DALE LEZON
Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle
Feb. 6, 2010, 11:10AM
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Harris County Sheriff's Office
Almita Nicole Lockhart is charged with injury to a child.

1993: Complaint of neglectful supervision of two sons. Family moved; CPS closed the case before making a determination.

1994: Physical abuse complaint of the same boys and medical neglect complaint of another brother and sister. CPS records could not be located.

1996: Complaint that Lockhart’s four children were abandoned. CPS records could not be located.

1999: Complaint of neglectful supervision of Lockhart’s now five children. “Ruled out” by CPS.

2000: On Feb. 24, the day Halle was born, Lockhart tested positive for drugs. CPS ruled the incident “reason to believe” and ordered her to drug treatment. “Mother failed to complete services.” Case was closed.

2001: Complaint of physical neglect reported involving six of Lockhart’s children. “Ruled out” by CPS.

2003: Complaint of neglectful supervision of three children. Ruled “unable to determine” by CPS.

2005: Lockhart tested positive for drugs on the day of her eighth child’s birth. CPS ruled “reason to believe.” She was again ordered to drug treatment. She didn’t go. Case was closed.

2009: Halle declared dead Jan. 16. CPS removed Lockharts’ nine children.

2010: Lockhart charged Jan. 14 with injury to a child in Halle’s death.

Source: Texas CPS, Harris County District Attorney’s Office. For 17 years, Texas Child Protective Services workers suspected that Almita Nicole Lockhart, a drug addict now accused of starving her daughter to death, was unable to care for her children.

They investigated in 1993 and 1994. In 1996 and 1999. And five other times between 2000 and 2009, the year her 8-year-old daughter, Halle Shamille Smith, died of starvation, records show.

Lockhart, 34, who has nine other children, was arrested this week and remained in jail Friday in lieu of $30,000 bail, charged with injury to a child, accused of allowing Halle to starve to death a year ago.

Lockhart's court-appointed defense attorney, Daphne Pattison, did not return a phone call Friday.

Born prematurely at 27 weeks, Halle had suffered convulsions, meningitis, tuberculosis, a broken arm and a stroke in the years before she died.

She weighed 15½ pounds when she was brought into Methodist Willowbrook Hospital on Jan. 16, 2009, a bundle of “skin and bones,” officials later told CPS.

Halle, fed her entire life through a feeding tube, was five weeks shy of her ninth birthday when she was declared dead in the hospital's emergency room.

According to medical records, Halle weighed 35 pounds at age 2, dropped to 23 pounds by age 4 and weighed 27 pounds in November 2006, the last time it appears she was seen by doctors or nurses.

She lost 40 percent of her body weight between that last visit and the date of her death because of malnutrition and dehydration.

Kept her children
As the Harris County District Attorney's Office moves to prosecute Lockhart, Halle's case is the latest child abuse death involving a child and a family well-known to CPS investigators.

Among the eight previous CPS investigations involving Lockhart's children before Halle's death, only two involved abuse confirmed by CPS.

On the day Halle was born in 2000, Lockhart tested positive for drugs at the hospital. The same thing happened when Halle's brother was born in 2005.

In both cases, the evidence was irrefutable. In both cases, CPS required Lockhart to enroll in treatment for her drug addiction if she wanted to keep her children.

In both cases, Lockhart failed to complete drug treatment. In fact, in the 2005 case she even tried to alter her drug test, CPS spokesman Estella Olguin confirmed.

Yet CPS workers in 2000 and 2005 closed the cases, and no one considered removing Lockhart's other children from her care.

Didn't check with doctor
Halle was last seen by a CPS worker in 2006, the same year Lockhart was convicted on a drug charge. Halle was described by a caseworker as “healthy” despite being on a feeding tube.

However, the caseworker never contacted Halle's pediatrician, despite all her physical needs, to check on her care, Olguin said.

The lack of a check with the girl's doctor and the fact Lockhart never completed drug treatment should have kept the case open. Instead, it was closed.

"At that point in the case, we could have consulted with our attorneys about a possible removal," CPS spokesman Patrick Crimmins said. "We did not do so. In hindsight, that can certainly be viewed as a mistake."

CPS heard nothing more until Methodist Willowbrook notified authorities that Halle was dead.

CPS says that when it received the call about Halle's death, workers suspected immediately they had an abuse death on their hands. But Lockhart was not arrested.

“The information I received about why the mother was not detained by law enforcement or hospital officials is that there was ‘chaos at the time' and the mother fled from the hospital,” a CPS caseworker wrote in an affidavit filed last year with the 308th District Court.

It took a year of scouring through Halle's medical records and subsequent forensic tests to determine that the girl's death was a homicide.

Once the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office made the ruling, county prosecutors filed charges last month.

Parents cut off care
Lockhart received monthly federal disability checks for Halle's care, Medicaid for the girl's medical treatment, and in-home medical care from the time she was 20 months old.

But there was no sign of this type of care a year ago, when officials arrived at Lockhart's apartment in the 13500 block of Northborough in the Greenspoint area of north Houston.

“When the police arrived at the residence given by the mother the home contained no furnishing, no food and only contained a feeding pump and formula,” court documents stated.

Other records show Halle's in-home nursing care had been discontinued by Lockhart and her father, who is not charged.

He told prosecutors they discontinued it because they tired of medical personnel coming in and out.

The other children, who range in age from 2 to 18, were living elsewhere and taken into state custody, where five remain today. The four oldest have been placed with their father, Olguin said.

Lockhart's next court appearance is set for Feb. 24, the day Halle would have turned 10.

Halle was declared dead within minutes of her arrival at the hospital; her sole belongings listed as a shirt and a purple blanket.

Today, she lies buried in an unmarked grave at Paradise North Cemetery.

terri.langford@chron.com
dale.lezon@chron.com

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