Nyesha Crockett is escorted into court for a hearing in September. The young mother faces trial in February for charges that she killed her 11-month-old son, Micahyah, and nearly killed her 2-year-old daughter, Alaiyah, six months earlier. SBT File Photo/SANTIAGO FLORES
SOUTH BEND — Documents surrounding the death last fall of 11-month-old Micahyah Crockett include emails describing the distress of the caseworker who had pushed for more investigation into the devastating injuries to the boy's older sister just six months earlier.
Indiana Department of Child Services emails released to The Tribune and WSBT-TV include references to the caseworker and her supervisor, whom The Tribune is not identifying. The supervisor — who has worked for the agency since 2008 and was promoted in 2012 — was "a wreck," former St. Joseph County Director Linda Cioch wrote in the Aug. 31 email. "She was involved in the near fatality of the first sibling. ... She truly felt that one should have been substantiated (as neglect, by DCS), but police's findings indicated nothing. It was (her) gut feeling."
Nyesha Crockett, the mother of the two children, had told police and doctors when her daughter was taken to Memorial Hospital the girl had strangled herself with a scarf, and doctors said the injury could have been caused the way she described it.
The case manager and supervisor had responded in February when the girl, 2-year-old Alaiyah Crockett, was nearly killed. The girl remains on a ventilator and in a "vegetative state" in a children's facility in Shelbyville, Ind.
The documents relating directly to Alaiyah were withheld by Juvenile Magistrate Graham Polando after a hearing in which The Tribune and WSBT argued they should have been disclosable under state law, which says the fatalities and "near-fatalities" of children should become public. Polando noted state law is not specific enough as to what constitutes a "near-fatality."
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