Mom, Boyfriend Mangle 4-Year-Old's Body... Bodycam Footage Captures the Moment Police Arrest Sick Couple
Editor’s note: The original headline on this post was incorrect.
A Michigan couple has been arrested after allegedly murdering a 4-year-old child and mangling her body so badly that skin was peeling off, WDIV-TV reports.
Candace Diaz and her boyfriend, Brad Fields, are facing charges of felony murder, second-degree murder, torture and first-degree child abuse after the death of 4-year-old Gabrielle Diaz on Jan. 1.
Police in Sumpter Township, Michigan, had been called to the family’s residence in the Rawsonville Woods Mobile Home park to attend to an unresponsive girl with “obvious” severe burns covering her body. Relatives were conducting CPR.
Gabrielle was pronounced dead a short time later at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor. According to the U.K. Daily Mail, police say the child was left in a scalding bath while her mother made pancakes in the next room. The burns on the girl’s were so bad that police found melted skin in the bottom of the bathtub. One detective said the injuries were so severe that her large toe fell off of her body.
In addition to the burns, officials found bruises in various stages of healing all over the 4-year-old’s body, indicative of longer-term child abuse.
The medical examiner called Gabrielle’s murder the “worst child abuse death” he’d seen in decades.
Diaz, 24, and Fields, 28, were tracked down by police in Lake Park, Georgia, on Jan. 9 after fleeing Michigan. The dramatic capture was caught on the bodycam of one of the police officers and released by the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office.
The couple was captured after U.S. Marshals informed local police of a hit on the location of the suspects’ cell phone.
Both Diaz and Fields have a history of mental health problems. In May of 2016, police were called to their residence to deal with a barricaded gunman inside, although it’s unknown whether Diaz or Fields was involved.
Both will receive mental health treatment while in police custody. Neither suspect received bail.
As for their defense, Fields claims that she gave Gabrielle two separate baths, one on New Year’s Eve and one on New Year’s Day.
“The mother claimed she ran Gabrielle’s bath and placed Gabrielle into the tub after she filled the tub halfway,” a petition with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services reads. “The mother then claimed she left Gabrielle alone in the tub and went to the kitchen to make pancakes.”
Diaz then says she came back to find the child drowned; upon taking Gabrielle out of the bathtub, she vomited.
Diaz says Fields attempted CPR, but that nobody called 911 for 40 minutes.
Authorities have removed Gabrielle’s 1-year-old half-sister from the family and put her into state custody. As for the murdered child’s father, Kyle Barrett, he’s called for the book to be thrown at Diaz and Fields.
“I’m glad they were caught,” says Barrett.
“They deserve everything they should get. They deserve torture, hard times, worse than they did to my daughter.”
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