Blunt Force Trauma
Police say a 12-year-old boy is being charged with second-degree murder in the beating death of a 2-year-old foster child living with his family.
The boy is being charged as a juvenile and his name is not being released. Police spokeswoman Julie Parker says the boy's father called 911 Tuesday night to report the girl was unresponsive. The man performed CPR on the child, but she was pronounced dead at a hospital. Parker says an autopsy confirmed the child, identified as Aniyah Batchelor, died of blunt-force trauma. The 12-year-old, who lives in Fort Washington, was charged Wednesday and made his first appearance in court Thursday. He is being held at the Cheltenham Youth Facility.
12-Year-Old Charged In Toddler Aniyah Batchelor's Beating Death
07/05/12 04:24 PM ET 
PALMER PARK, Md. — Police say a 12-year-old boy is being charged with second-degree murder in the beating death of a 2-year-old foster child living with his family.
The boy is being charged as a juvenile and his name is not being released. Police spokeswoman Julie Parker says the boy's father called 911 Tuesday night to report the girl was unresponsive. The man performed CPR on the child, but she was pronounced dead at a hospital.
Parker says an autopsy confirmed the child, identified as Aniyah Batchelor, died of blunt-force trauma. The 12-year-old, who lives in Fort Washington, was charged Wednesday and made his first appearance in court Thursday. He is being held at the Cheltenham Youth Facility.
Preteen arrested in fatal beating of toddler
A 12-year-old boy allegedly beat a 2-year-old foster child to death
According to reports from The Washington Post, Aniyah, a foster child who had been living with the family, was beaten multiple times in a single incident and killed.
Prince George’s County police have not released a motive, but the Maryland Medical Examiner’s office confirmed that Aniyah died of blunt-force trauma.
The foster parents were not home when the tragedy took place, and had left the oldest of their biological children, a 15-year-old girl, in charge.
The father was summoned home and called 911 after finding Aniyah unconscious and unresponsive to CPR attempts. She was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead shortly thereafter.
According to Aniyah’s mother, Stephany Cunningham, the toddler had been placed under the care of this foster family in November when (along with Cunningham’s other two children) Aniyah was taken by the state after an incident involving Stephany’s 3-year-old son who was scalded by a bathtub full of hot water.
The 12-year-old boy, who neighbors described as "the sweetest child you'd ever want to know," was charged on Wednesday and is currently being held nearby at the Cheltenham Youth Facility.
—Jacob Rohn
12-year-old charged with murder of toddler
By ,
A 12-year-old boy in Fort Washington has been charged with second-degree murder in the beating death of a 2-year-old girl who was staying with his family as a foster child under the supervision of social services officials, Prince George’s County police said.
The victim, Aniyah Batchelor, had been in foster care since November, according to her mother, Stephany Cunningham, who has two other children, both being cared for by other people. Aniyah, who turned 2 in March, had been placed with a family of five in a house in the 1800 block of Taylor Street, where she was beaten by the 12-year-old boy Tuesday, police spokeswoman Julie Parker said.
The foster parents, a man and a woman, were not at home at the time of the incident, Parker said. She said the parents have three biological children — girls ages 15 and 4, in addition to the 12-year-old boy — and that the older girl was in charge of the other youngsters when the beating occurred.
Without providing a specific timeline of events, Parker said the foster father “was summoned home” late Tuesday morning, after the beating, and found Aniyah unconscious. He called 911 at 12:09 p.m. As an ambulance headed to the house — a neatly kept brick-front split-level with red shutters and a small front lawn — the father tried to revive Aniyah with cardiopulmonary resuscitation, Parker said.
The girl was pronounced dead at a hospital. After an autopsy Wednesday, Parker said, the Maryland medical examiner’s office concluded that the girl was a homicide victim and that the cause of death was blunt-force trauma. Shortly afterward, the boy was charged with second-degree murder.
Second-degree murder, or murder that is not premeditated, is a lesser crime than first-degree murder. Because the boy was charged as a juvenile, police declined to identify him, who they said is being held at the Cheltenham Youth Facility.
Cunningham, 25, of Landover said her other children are a 5-year-old girl and a 3-year-old boy. Last fall, she said, she had custody of Aniyah and her other daughter, but her son was being cared for by a relative. Cunningham said she was living in an Adelphi apartment at the time. One day in November, she said, the relative brought the 3-year-old boy to visit her, and a horrible accident occurred.
Cunningham said someone — not her — mistakenly put the boy in a tub filled with scalding water while trying to give him a bath. “He got all burned,” she recalled, sobbing loudly on the phone. “His skin was coming off real bad.”
As a result of that incident, Cunningham said, a Prince George’s County judge removed the two girls from her custody. She said that the 5-year-old girl went to live with a foster family in the District and that Aniyah was placed with the family in Fort Washington.
Foster children in Prince George’s are the responsibility of the county’s Department of Social Services and its parent agency, the Maryland Department of Human Resources. Police referred all questions about the Fort Washington family to Pat Hines, a spokesman for the state human resources agency. Citing privacy rules, Hines would not discuss Aniyah or the foster parents’ history of caring for children under state supervision
